ONE CITY, ONE MONUMENT (REX INSTEAD OF REX: THE RIOT OF A TRAGEDY, THE REVIVAL OF A MEMORY)

Project Introduction

Rex Cinema in Abadan caught fire on August 19, 1978 (28 Mordad 1357 in the Iranian calendar), while the film The Deer (Gavaznha), directed by Masoud Kimiai, was being screened. According to official reports published at the time of the incident, 377 people lost their lives, although different accounts exist regarding the exact number of victims and the circumstances of the fire. The question of responsibility for the fire has also remained highly contested, with different historical narratives attributing responsibility to different actors.

The significance of Rex Cinema extends beyond the tragedy of 1978. The cinema was embedded within the urban context of Abadan, a city that, during the development of the oil industry, became one of Iran’s major centers of modern urban life. Cinemas, clubs, theaters, and other cultural spaces played an important role in its social structure. From this perspective, Rex can be understood as part of the city’s cultural and social infrastructure—a place whose function extended beyond film screening into the realm of collective urban experience.

The physical structure of Rex is also part of the project’s question. According to documents related to the Rex Cinema case, the cinema occupied the second floor of a building whose ground floor contained shops and a gallery, while the building was connected to major and secondary streets on all four sides. This condition allows Rex to be studied not as an isolated object, but as part of the urban fabric and everyday life of the city.

Although the physical structure of the cinema disappeared, the relationship between place and memory did not. Studies of collective memory demonstrate that places can become carriers and generators of collective memories, while the relationship between place and memory is reciprocal: social experiences give meaning to places, while places contribute to the formation and continuity of memory.

Accordingly, the central question of this project is not the historical reconstruction of Rex Cinema. An exact reconstruction of the building could, at best, produce an image of a past condition. The primary concern of the project is instead the relationship between the lost physical structure, the remaining memory, and the contemporary life of the city.

The Idea of “Rex Instead of Rex”

The project, titled “Rex Instead of Rex,” proposes that rather than reconstructing the physical structure of the cinema, its collective and social qualities should be redefined within a contemporary public space.

In this approach, the cinema is treated not merely as a building, but as a social place—a place for presence, pause, encounter, viewing, and collective experience. The project therefore does not replace Rex with a new cinema building. Instead, it creates a memory-based urban park that culminates in a public space for film screening.

This approach is consistent with contemporary studies of the regeneration of historic places and collective memory. Such studies demonstrate that the continuity of collective memory does not necessarily depend on the complete preservation of a physical structure; it can also be reproduced through the relationship between place, event, activity, and social values. Likewise, contemporary approaches to heritage conservation recognize that removing elements belonging to subsequent historical periods in order to restore an “authentic” historical condition can itself erase part of collective memory.

From this perspective, what deserves to return is not necessarily the former function of the cinema, but its social character as a collective space: a place for gathering, pausing, meeting, narrating, watching, listening, and remembering. The revival of Rex can therefore move beyond the reconstruction of a cinema and become the redefinition of a public space based on memory.

The Urban Palimpsest

The theoretical foundation of the project is the concept of the urban palimpsest: a city in which historical, social, and physical layers accumulate over one another, where new transformations do not necessarily erase the traces of previous periods.

Studies of the urban palimpsest demonstrate that even when physical form changes, the meaning and identity of a place can continue through the reinterpretation of its historical and cultural layers.

In the Rex project, this concept goes beyond metaphor and becomes the organizing mechanism of the design. Historical layers are not presented as a collection of independent images or pieces of information; instead, they are experienced through spatial sequence, changes in form, material, scale, level, and the varying presence and absence of built form along the movement through the site.

The final project is organized into seven spatial sequences:

Abadan → Rex → Tragedy → Loss → Void → Rex Instead of Rex → Mordad Staircase and Return to the City

The design principle is that each layer should not completely erase the previous one; rather, traces of the previous layer are transferred into the next as lines, proportions, materials, voids, or memories.

The project is therefore not a reconstruction of the past, but its reinterpretation in the present.

Spatial Scenario of the Park

The spatial scenario transforms the history of Rex Cinema into an experiential spatial sequence. The park functions as a public framework in which the historical and conceptual layers of the project are organized, allowing the visitor to encounter the different layers gradually through movement rather than confronting all the information simultaneously.

The project has a linear structure. The visitor enters from one end, moves through the sequences, experiences the open-air cinema and the exit staircase, and finally returns to the city from the opposite end.

1. Abadan | Urban Context

The first sequence, located at the entrance to the site, represents Abadan. This section does not attempt to reconstruct an historical image of the city through construction. Instead, the park itself functions as an extension of Abadan’s public realm.

This sequence is defined as a trapezoid with sides of 50, 30, 30, and 30 meters, with a height of 30 meters, resulting in an area of 1,200 square meters. Its 50-meter side faces the city and the street, while its 30-meter side forms the entrance toward the cinema zone.

The boundary between the city and the project is established only through the entrance and landscape organization rather than through a solid wall or building. The visitor initially experiences the project as an urban park and gradually enters the narrative of the place.

2. Rex | Reading the Physical Trace

The second sequence begins within a 30 × 40 meter area with a total area of 1,200 square meters.

This area forms the common spatial framework for Sequences 2, 3, and 4 and is entered through its 30-meter side. At this point, the historical entrance of the cinema is reinterpreted. The cinema façade, entrance sign, posters, banners, and visual references associated with The Deer are introduced.

The objective is not to reconstruct the entire building, but to create the visitor’s first direct encounter with “Rex” and initiate movement through the cinema.

3. Tragedy | Rupture and Discontinuity

The visitor continues through the same 30 × 40 meter area, while the physical quality of the cinema gradually changes.

The intact cinema is no longer presented as a stable condition. Walls, surfaces, and spatial elements progressively become damaged, burned, and deteriorated.

The intention is not a literal or theatrical representation of fire, but the creation of a gradual transformation of architectural condition.

Continuity, order, and spatial legibility begin to deteriorate, directing the visitor toward the condition of loss.

4. Loss | The Disappearance of the Building

The remaining ruin is gradually removed.

The physical elements that survived in Sequence 3 progressively diminish until the building effectively disappears at the end of the 30 × 40 meter zone.

This point marks the end of the physical presence of Rex and the beginning of the void.

Sequence 4 is therefore not a representation of a ruin, but the process through which ruin becomes absence.

5. Void | Urban Palimpsest

After the disappearance of the building, the visitor enters a 30 × 30 meter square void, with an area of 900 square meters.

This hollow cube is the spatial turning point of the project. Rather than constructing something in place of the cinema, its absence itself becomes an architectural element.

The walls and surrounding surfaces frame the void, while movement continues through it. The visitor moves through the empty space for a period before encountering the frame of the open-air cinema at its end.

This moment marks the transition from the lost Rex to Rex Instead of Rex.

6. Rex Instead of Rex | Open-Air Cinema

At the end of the void, the visitor enters an 8 × 30 meter entrance lobby, adjacent to the 30-meter side of the void. The lobby has an area of 240 square meters and accommodates ticketing, a refreshment counter, cinema-related merchandise, posters, and historical information.

The lobby leads directly into a semicircular open-air cinema with a 40-meter radius. The geometric area of the semicircle is approximately 2,513 square meters.

The audience seating is organized symmetrically, with a total of 377 seats. This number functions as a memorial reference to the reported number of victims of the tragedy. One additional solitary seat is positioned on the central axis in the first row; while preserving the overall symmetry, it deliberately interrupts the central circulation line.

The lobby and the last seating row are positioned at ±0.00, while the screen and the closest seating row are located at −2.80 meters.

The screen is placed on an independent platform and has a width of 12 meters. A service and access corridor is located behind the screen, allowing the exit route to remain visually concealed from the main audience space.

At this point, Rex Instead of Rex is realized: the cinema is no longer a closed building but an open public space for screening, gathering, and collective experience.

7. Mordad Staircase | Exit and Return to the City

The exit from the open-air cinema occurs behind the screen. The screen is placed on an independent platform, while a corridor behind it connects the cinema to the Mordad Staircase.

The staircase begins with a width of 12 meters, equal to the width of the screen, and progressively opens outward along the exit route until reaching a width of 30 meters at the upper level.

The staircase consists of 28 steps, each with a riser height of 10 centimeters, producing a total level difference of 2.80 meters. With a tread depth of 30 centimeters, the horizontal run of the staircase is approximately 8.4 meters.

At the top of the staircase, a flat exit lobby provides a transitional space before the visitor returns to the park and the city.

The “Mordad Staircase” is the final layer of the narrative—not an independent monument, but part of the exit sequence through which history is registered in movement and in the return to the city.

Overall Logic of the Spatial Sequence

The project is therefore organized as a continuous linear sequence:

1. Abadan → 2. Rex → 3. Tragedy → 4. Loss → 5. Void → 6. Rex Instead of Rex → 7. Mordad Staircase and Return to the City

This sequence transforms historical narrative into architectural experience.

The visitor first enters the park, encounters the building, moves through it, witnesses its transformation and destruction, confronts its absence, passes through the void, and finally encounters a new cinematic space.

The project therefore moves from presence to absence, and from absence to renewed presence.

Conclusion

“Rex Instead of Rex” seeks to shift the question of the lost building from physical reconstruction toward the recreation of the relationship between place, memory, and collective life.

Rex does not return in its former physical form. Instead, the qualities that once made it a social and public space are redefined through a contemporary landscape and architectural structure.

The park, organized through the seven sequences of Abadan, Rex, Tragedy, Loss, Void, Rex Instead of Rex, and the Mordad Staircase, becomes a spatial palimpsest in which the past is not erased but participates in constructing a new condition.

In this reading, reviving Rex does not mean reviving its building; it means reviving the possibility of collective presence in a place whose memory remains embedded in the city.

The open-air cinema at the end of the sequence is not a replacement for the historic building, but a contemporary translation of its social character. There, The Deer appears again on the screen—the same film that was being shown when the tragedy occurred.

The film thus establishes a connection between Rex before the tragedy and Rex redefined in the present.

After the screening, the visitor ascends the Mordad Staircase and returns to the city. The exit therefore does not mark the end of memory; it transfers memory from the architectural space into the mind and experience of the visitor.

Rex is not reconstructed; its memory is revived.

Detailed Architectural Design Description

The project is organized as a linear park measuring 100 × 200 meters, with a total area of 20,000 square meters, structured around a continuous pedestrian axis extending from the urban entrance to the final exit.

The primary entrance sequence is designed as a trapezoid with 50-meter and 30-meter sides and a 30-meter height. It leads into the historic cinema zone, measuring 30 × 40 meters. This area accommodates Sequences 2, 3, and 4. The physical traces of Rex begin with the historical entrance, cinema sign, posters, banners, and visual references, then progressively transform through deterioration, burning, and disappearance until they become a 30 × 30 meter hollow cube.

The void is defined by monolithic exposed-concrete walls, dark stone surfaces, and precise geometric lines embedded into the ground. No enclosed building volume occupies the interior of this space.

Following the void, an 8 × 30 meter entrance lobby provides access to the open-air cinema. The lobby incorporates ticketing, a refreshment counter, display surfaces, poster panels, and historical information. It connects directly to a semicircular amphitheater with a 40-meter radius.

The open-air cinema consists of stepped exposed-concrete seating platforms, radial circulation paths, and two symmetrical quarter-circle movement axes. This geometry allows the seating to remain symmetrical in relation to the screen while preserving visual connections between the audience and the surrounding spatial layers.

A total of 377 seats are arranged in concentric and symmetrical rows, with one additional solitary seat positioned on the central axis in the first row.

The lobby and last seating row are positioned at ±0.00, while the screen and first seating row are positioned at −2.80 meters.

The cinema screen has a width of 12 meters and is mounted on an independent platform. A service corridor behind the screen provides access for staff, projection equipment, technical systems, and audience evacuation. The corridor connects directly to the Mordad Staircase.

The exit staircase begins at 12 meters wide, equal to the screen width, and progressively expands to 30 meters at the upper level. It consists of 28 steps, each with a 10-centimeter riser and a 30-centimeter tread, resolving the total 2.80-meter level difference. A flat exit lobby is provided at the upper level as a transition between the staircase, the park, and the city.

The primary site paths are designed with a minimum width of 4 meters, using durable, level paving and providing universal accessibility. Secondary paths, approximately 2–2.5 meters wide, connect the main axis to landscaped areas and resting spaces.

The park landscape combines shade trees appropriate to Abadan’s climate, palms, heat-resistant species, grass areas, and low-water planting. Lightweight metal shade structures with perforated or tensile coverings are positioned at key resting points.

Memorial walls and information panels are constructed from exposed concrete, brick, weathered steel, and translucent glass. They provide surfaces for historical texts, images, archival material, and interpretive content. These elements are positioned either independently within the landscape or as extensions of the geometric traces of Rex.

Concrete and timber benches, seating platforms, shallow linear water features, drinking fountains, waste bins, and other urban furniture are distributed throughout the park using a consistent design language.

Public restrooms and service facilities are positioned within the non-axial areas of the park, particularly near the entrance and exit, providing convenient access without disrupting the principal visual and narrative axis.

Lighting is integrated through recessed linear fixtures in the ground, linear illumination along walls, and controlled uplighting of trees. In the Tragedy and Loss zones, illumination is reduced, while in the open-air cinema the lighting is carefully controlled so that the projection screen remains the primary visual focus.

The material palette consists of exposed concrete, brick, dark stone, weathered steel, timber, and translucent glass. Changes in the proportion and character of these materials along the route express the transition from city to building, from building to tragedy, from tragedy to void, and from void to contemporary public space.

Landscape, architecture, structure, lighting, urban furniture, and environmental graphics are therefore treated as parts of a single integrated system. The seven-part narrative is not only described in the project text but becomes legible through the plan, section, materiality, level changes, landscape, and the visitor’s movement through space.

The project ultimately seeks to make the central contradiction of the design physically perceptible:

A building that no longer exists, alongside a place that lives again.

This is the point at which Rex Instead of Rex moves beyond the idea of a memorial and becomes a contemporary public space.