One of the major concerns of the architectural design is what features make a place meaningful. The raised question is what features can transform space to place, to make it meaningful in terms of encouraging social interaction among strangers. Tehran as a capital city of Iran, despite of having so many parks, restaurants, coffee houses and shopping centers, still misses social interaction and passion in public spaces that could improve coexistence and understanding of the others. Unfortunately, with passage of time, the passion of people to go to the parks has decreased, mainly because of safety issues. Therefore, enjoyability has decreased and many parks have become places for homeless and addicted people. On the other hand, restaurants and coffee houses in Tehran are typically designed in a way that they do not engage people in social interactions. Furniture arrangement is mostly focused on separation of spaces, meaning that they provide a private space for groups of people. Also, in these kind of places there are no special events to provide a foundation for connecting people with different backgrounds, cultures and thoughts. So, you can usually see individuals enjoy their privacy. Therefore, it is unlikely to see sparks among strangers.

The focus of this study is to explore new methods that will support social interaction in public spaces in one of the significant historical streets in Tehran. Valiasr street is a tree-lined street which divides this city into eastern and western parts, which makes it one of the major paths for both pedestrians and motorists. Even though it is one of the major attractions of Tehran, lack of a decent public space is obvious. Although, it has lots of common public spaces such as parks, restaurants and cafés, as a capital city of a developing country there is a lot of room for improvement. To achieve this goal, multiple methods of gathering data such as archival information, observation, surveys and crowdsourcing of social media will be used. A part of this study relies on social science to find trends and patterns in people’s behavior. Also historical research has to be used to study the past and present state of the area to develop a design for the future.

The result of this study would be coming up with design of small scale places with specified boundaries or furniture arrangements that will make a dynamic environment to make people pause for a few moments from their daily routines and socialize in new ways. The outcome is mostly concerned with the experience of the users. There are some questions that need to be answered: What kinds of social interaction beyond conversation could be developed in urban space? What kind of experience makes people enthusiastic about social interactions? What factors of place can transform passive users to active ones? How is it possible to spark something among strangers who have no previous history with each other?