Ekbatan

Ekbatan Town (Persian: Šahrak e Ekbātān – شهرک اکباتان‎‎) is a planned town located in the north western part of Tehran, Iran. It is located approximately 5 kilometers west of central Tehran.

The town is named after Ecbatana, the capital city of the ancient Median Empire around 700 BC. It was the first capital of Iranians to be established in Western Asia, and is the ancestor of the modern city of Hamedan.

The word Ekbātān is a variant of (Greek: Εκβάτανα – Ekbátana) which derives from Old Persian Haŋgmetana, meaning "the gathering place".

The construction of Ekbatan was started in 1975, for the purpose of mass housing. It was designed by Rahman Golzar and American architect Jordan Gruzen. Phase 1 of the town was then successfully built and completed by the American company Starrett, before the 1979 Revolution.

At the beginning, Ekbatan was the largest property development by a privately held company in Western Asia. The constructors also owned Ekbatan Bank, which was one of the fastest growing privately held banks in Western Asia. The constructor group was owned in majority by Rahman Golzar and his family, and in minority by Mohammad Ali Bagherzadeh. In 1977, Mohammad Ali Bagherzadeh transferred his shares in the group to his children Ali and Goli.

Following the 1979 Revolution, the new incoming government nationalized the group and all its subsidiaries and affiliates, and placed its ownership with the Ministry of Housing, where it remains today. Ekbatan Bank was nationalized at the same time, subsumed into the new state bank created to be the successor to Iran's privately held banks.

Ekbatan has 15,500 units on an area of 2,208,570 square meters. It has three separate sets of buildings called phases (Persian: fāz‎‎), and each phase has independent buildings categorized as a block. The architecture in the first and third phases are similar, and are very different from Phase 2. Each block of Phase 1 (and of Phase 3) has three major steps. When looked at from the sides, there are five floors in first step, nine in second and twelve in the third one. At Phase 2, blocks are designed like huge twelve-story box-shaped parts that are put together in an angle. Another difference between Phase 1 (or Phase 3) and Phase 2 is the interior layout of the apartments. At Phase 1 (and Phase 3), apartments are single-floored. However, at Phase 2, they are built mostly in double floors (duplex) with hall, and the kitchen in the first floor and rooms placed in the upper (second) floor. At all of these phases you could find one-, two-, three- or four-roomed apartments that begin from about 50 m2 to 240 m2.

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