Three Lessons from Khaju Bridge, in the Promotion and Construction of New Urban Nodes

Abstract

In the last few years, we have been working with the idea of urban nodes and intersections, looking at different historical and actual categories of “city corners”1 and territorial and urban crossing points, in variation and specified. It is the multiplication and accumulation of different city corners and urban nodes which all together configures not just the city of Esfahan but, also, any other city. Khaju Bridge is one of the most popular public places that represents a type of urban nodes in the city of Esfahan. By studying the Khaju Bridge, as a hybrid infrastructural element and its changing functions and influential domains in different historical periods, since the beginning to the present moment, we could extrapolate and share three essential and applicable lessons for looking at or intervening in the case of current urban intersections, including: Turning to a richer condition, from the specialized to a hybrid infrastructure It is crucial to see how the Khaju Bridge, as an important urban node, got more complex reflecting the need of the city for growth and new development. Replacing the khaju with its previous bridge was the transformation of a simple bridge (single functioning or a more specialized system) to the promoted and more complex one; the bridge- dike- palace of Khaju as a hybrid infrastructural element. The dual level of urban land Even though that “doubling the land” seems something very modern, we see how a historical element like the bridge of Khaju, as an infrastructural artifact, at its strategical position, takes the advantages of multiplying opportunities and options through doubling the surface of the urban land. The capacity of being flexible The bridge has been changed a lot since the beginning to the present moment. At the middle of the 17th century the bridge was working in the middle of more open space, was inducing in something more than itself, in association with different other elements such as a temporary and artificial lake in alliance with the gardens and palaces, water canals, mils and water wells. Nowadays, the bridge is standing on its own, working in a smaller, closer ambient and limited to the two fronts of the river but still successful, favorable and crowded, even when it is sitting on the dried riverbed of Zayandeh-Rud.