The project is shaped around an underground shelter that remained buried since the 1980 war, located along Pasdaran Street in Sanandaj. Once a place of refuge during bombardments, the shelter had long been abandoned and forgotten beneath the everyday life of the city.
Project Name: Hidden Core
Studio Name: JUR Studio
Project location: Sanandaj , Iran
Status: Concept
Design Team: Barbod Alimohamadi, Leila Zali
Engineering: Shadman Mobarakshahi
Photo Credits: Jur Studio
Today, its surroundings are neglected, often occupied by marginal and criminal groups rather than serving the wider community. Its presence was known only through memory, shaping a layer of collective history for a specific generation.
Hence, our intervention begins with excavation. The hidden structure is uncovered and revealed as the central object of the design. Rather than erasing or replacing it, the project allows the shelter to define the architecture that unfolds around it. The shelter itself generates a grid: one that reflects its own geometry, resonates with the city, and emerges from within its interior. This grid anchors the project, extending outward until it meets and connects with the larger urban grid. The gallery space is thus organized directly in relation to the shelter’s form. Instead of placing artworks into a predefined setting, the very space of the gallery grows outward from the shelter, shaping circulation, sequences, and encounters as it expands into the surrounding ground.
The transformation continues above ground. The roof of the shelter, once concealed beneath layers of soil, becomes a new public platform. It extends into the city as an open ground for gathering, and everyday use. This shift turns what was once an introverted and hidden place into a point of openness and connection.
Through the new proposal, the project redefines the shelter not as an abandoned remnant of war, but as a public space embedded in the city. It preserves the historical value of an urban artifact while generating new forms of contemporary urban life, where memory, transformation, and daily experience are interwoven.
