Baku, December 22, AZERTAC

Azerbaijan has always paid great attention to urban planning, to the complexity of urban development. Creating a comfortable environment for people, provided with comfortable housing, health and recreation, cultural leisure, education, has always been the focus of urban planning and education in this area.

The state paid great attention to the issues of Baku's territorial development, its prospective formation and transformation.

Emir Huseynov, a professor at the Azerbaijan University of Architecture and Construction, has been doing just that for many years. Now under his leadership another experiment in architectural education has been successfully completed.

“It all started before pandemic, when I was working on a strategy to organize graduate projects for bachelors. The strategy was built in a consistent solution of a few urban problems,” professor Emir Huseynov has told AZERTAC.

He said: “Then, for the first time in the practice of the educational process, a single program was created, based on interconnected research sites in the center of Baku. The new approach included the joint work of different groups of students on the "problem learning" (PLB) system. This is a method of organizing student activities, which is based on obtaining information by creatively solving theoretical and practical problems in emerging problem situations.

"The architectural project is known to be a result of teamwork, so as one of the components of the experiment, it was planned to include both bachelors and masters in the group of students," Huseynov mentioned.

"At that time, masters from Italy were studying at the Azerbaijan University of Architecture and Construction. They came through the Erasmus student exchange program. Having shown interest in the ideas of the concept, they became part of the design team. The local center in the problem of the study was the project "Transformation of the 28 May Square." Bachelor Narmin Dashdamirli offered an architectural solution to the multifunctional pedestrian hub. At the competition organized by the Union of Architects in 2020, her project took an honorable second place.

Considering the unfavorable situation on the station square, the proposal to renovate the existing building of the University of Oil and Industry and create a modern educational complex on the new territory became relevant. The renovation project was prepared by the Master of The Polytechnic University of Milan, Daniel Zarepourmoghaddam, and the project of the new university complex was presented by Bachelor of Science Najiba Mammadova. Her project finished third in the final.

Furthermore, a close location and intersection of urban axes of the square space and the boulevard strip resulted in developing a group of linked pedestrian spaces up to the Sultan Burnu cape.

The "Oil Museum" project developed by Lala Iskandarli was the culmination and a compositional accent of the panorama of the coastal part of Baku. It was selected by the jury of the International Academy of Architecture to be presented at the exhibition of the projects at the Interarch contest in Bulgaria. The next highlight, this time directly in the educational experiment was the "Project for the Rehabilitation of the New Territory of the Boulevard" by master Kevin Prenna. After returning to Milan, he took the subject as a basis and continued its in-depth research in his master's thesis under the direction of Professor Nora Lombardini of Milan Polytechnic University.

On December 17, 2020, during the presentation of the project, the diploma work received the highest score," the scientist said.

“A new series of diploma papers is ready now. As a result of the victory in the Karabakh war, there are great opportunities for urban planning. We will need to develop cities and towns, rebuild all the liberated lands, draw up a scheme of development taking into account both territorial and economic development of the regions,” he added.

Professor Emir Huseynov is ready for a new experiment - the involvement of students in the process of group works, which will definitely result in new successes of students.