Tabiat Bridge

Araghian’s brief was a footbridge; she designed something people would have no reason to leave. The 270-metre crossing between Taleghani and Ab-o-Atash parks is deliberately not straight and not level: three decks weave over and under each other along a curved line, so the walk is slow and the view keeps changing, and the wide lower levels carry cafés, benches and enough room to sit down. The structure is a three-dimensional steel truss on three columns that branch like trees, its members left exposed so the geometry is legible from underneath, where the Modarres Expressway runs. Diba Tensile Architecture, founded by Araghian and Alireza Behzadi in 2005, won the commission in competition; the bridge opened in October 2014 and took the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016, the jury calling an infrastructure project of this kind a breath of fresh air.