ZHA has been selected to design a new 198-hectare urban district in Baku, Azerbaijan. The project surrounds the existing Baku Expo Center events venue in a pine forest area that is planned to be preserved. The plan responds to the city's population growth over the past decade with a masterplan to organize the provision of a wide variety of residences. This is the firm's second project in Baku, after the Heydar Aliyev Center cultural venue, completed in 2013. On a different scale, the buildings in the new district appear to follow the geometric style inherited from Zaha Hadid, in a series of white buildings with rounded edges that convey an idea of fluid architecture.
The masterplan is shaped by a forest preservation strategy, aiming to preserve 92% of the site's 18,000 existing trees to aid natural cooling, wind buffering, and microclimate regulation, while also incorporating comprehensive forestry management and a future replanting program. It is arranged as a series of interconnected neighborhoods linked by pedestrian pathways and cycle routes, with tree-lined boulevards and landscaped nature corridors. Aligned with Baku's 2030 transport strategy, the masterplan will have direct connections to the city center, the airport, and the wider metropolitan region through Baku's expanding public transport network, which includes the upgrade of the Bakikhanov–Bina–Gala rail line.
The project combines one-bedroom apartments and large family homes while integrating civic institutions such as kindergartens, schools, local shops and markets, entertainment and cultural venues, as well as public parks, sports clubs, and medical clinics. At the center of the masterplan is a public square with cultural venues, cafés, restaurants, and leisure facilities for residents and visitors attending events at the new Baku Expo Center extension and new Congress Hall. The building program is designed to support the expansion of the exhibition and conference center, including a new hotel near the international airport. All new buildings are designed with a green roof system to enhance thermal insulation and reduce cooling energy demand. This system is integral to the district's stormwater management, which collects and naturally filters rainwater for reuse while also mitigating the urban heat island effect.
Baku is known as the 'City of Winds' for the prevailing Khazri wind blowing inland from the Caspian Sea throughout winter, and it also experiences the humid Gilavar wind, which brings warm air from the Iranian plateau during the summer months. The Baku Expo City masterplan addresses these specific climatic conditions through pedestrian wind comfort analysis. The analysis has allowed buildings within each neighborhood to be arranged as protective barriers that deflect the prevailing winds, reducing their speed at ground level and creating sheltered public spaces for outdoor leisure and recreation. This environmental strategy also ensures the year-round usability of the community plazas, pedestrian walkways, and cycle routes throughout the masterplan.
Swiss architecture office Herzog & de Meuron recently revealed updated images of its masterplan for Qatar's Al Maha Island and the design of the future Lusail Museum. UNStudio recently revealed a river-oriented masterplan for a former industrial site along the Someș River in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, to be transformed into a large-scale mixed-use district that reconnects the city with its waterfront. MVRDV and OODA have revealed a new masterplan for the regeneration of a vacant 28-hectare site between Marvila and Beato on Lisbon's riverfront, recently approved by the Lisbon City Council. A team led by French architecture practice Coldefy, comprising CITYFÖRSTER, Sporaarchitects, TREIBHAUS.LAND, and Marko & Placemakers, has won the competition to design a masterplan for Rákosrendező in Budapest, transforming a brownfield site long regarded as the city's "rust belt."
