An opening
Mohammad Khabbaz, an architecture student of Mashhad Azad University, referring to one of the first subjects of modern architecture — the railway station — presents the Mashhad Railway Station, built between 1980-1998, as a considerable specimen of modern architectural experience in Iran.
The station is among the new uses that took up the early roots of modern architecture, and the simultaneous presence of several currents of contemporary architecture is also worth a careful expert's attention. This building, especially in connection with the holy shrine and the surrounding fabric of the city of Mashhad, is among the most distinctive. The Bureau of Construction and Installations of the Railway of the Islamic Republic of Iran, under the supervision of Eng. Gholamreza Kabari, carried it out.
Structure: classical from outside, baroque from inside
The rectangular structure of the plan, the classical façade with regular columns and the roof, gives a fitting space for the relief of every anxious traveller. The monumental volume from the outside, on the inside, makes a magnificent hall, which, with its proportional parts, is wholly in the service of the use's theme — travel.
The sequence of white-clad columns calls to mind the familiar sound of the train, and brings forth a pleasant chiaroscuro under the dark curve of the ceiling. The contrast of dark and light, of vertical and horizontal, is established between part of these columns and the office space behind; the columns, like a louvred screen of the building's own material, let the outside light in, so that whoever is inside, in the cool of an easing shadow, may carry out his work.
The main hall: the ceiling, a bird in flight
Passing the entrance, we reach the main hall — its ticket-windows, shops, restaurant, and offices all set in a rectangular plan. The grandeur of the interior, beyond the scale of the space, is owed to its ceiling: an undulating concrete shell that beautifully shows a bird with open wings in flight. This is the work's serious identity-giver, recalling famous buildings in the history of contemporary architecture.
Columns and waiting hall
The roof rests on oval-section columns, in two parallel rows along the length of the hall, whose section narrows from the top down; and on the two sides of the hall it is laterally braced by two very large columns. The waiting hall has taken shape in the space between these columns — with a rectangular plan and the regular sequence of columns on either side, like a Greek temple.
A separate volume is attached to the side of this temple. This volume holds the office spaces above; the entrance and upper-level office spaces and the shops on the ground floor; and the services and installations in the basement — in such a way that one face of it opens onto the square, and another face opens onto the interior space of the hall.
Symbolic, sculptural totality
The overall composition of the space — both in the elements used and the manner of their design, and in the choice of reinforced concrete as the dominant material — has set up a fitting and pleasant composition that recalls the great works of the post-Second-World-War period in Europe, the era of the lasting architectures.
The symbolic, sculptural totality of the building stamps the seal of approval on its belonging to that era. The Parthenon scenario, perhaps, places the historian's gaze on this style more emphatically.
The square: horizontal motion
Perhaps the horizontal motion of this building on the square, without a square-architecture of its own, is so completing that one cannot ask whether it harmonises in style with the building or not. For it is understood — this structure is the symbol of the meeting and the bringing-near of human beings from distant places, and the marker of a familiar reunion.
The travellers of Mashhad's trains take with them the memory of this building: a bird, with open wings, at the threshold of the holy shrine, welcoming them.
Footnotes
1. Abadi, fourth year, sixteenth issue: Soheila Beski's conversation with Dr. Gholamreza Kabari.
* The spatial structure of Tabriz Railway Station is wholly similar to that of Mashhad, and only slight differences in execution-details are seen. Unfortunately, no precise information about its historical background was available.