She suggests creating social, cultural and musical spaces on the rooftops of the city of Bushehr to revive the tradition of the Iranian city.

Fatemeh Behfar, a predoctoral researcher on the URV programme “City, Territory and Sustainable Planning”, has been awarded first prize in the Iran_Lab call Shared Research and Teaching by the Sapienza University of Rome. With the title “Cultural Roof”, her project involves revitalising the rooftops in Bushehr, a city in the south of Iran, and giving them a social and cultural use.

In this edition of the award, the Sapienza University of Rome aimed to generate visions of new public spaces to respond to the new needs of contemporary life in Iranian cities. The project takes for granted that architecture, urban planning, arts and design are all essential features of Iranian culture.

In conjunction with Maryam Merajoddin, Fatemah Behfar has designed a project, the goal of which is to revive the rooftops of the city of Bushehr, a feature of the city’s culture. More specifically, the project intends to give a new and modern use to rooftops, which for several years have been looked on as public spaces for social and cultural interaction because of the similarity of their architectural design.

Behfar and Merajoddin aimed to exploit this tradition to create social, cultural, and musical spaces that are attractive to the Iranian people, thus reviving rooftop nightlife. An art gallery, an outdoor cinema, traditional music events and a space to learn more about the culture of the city are some of the proposals that she makes in her project.