ENVIRAN is a new research project aiming at the research, design and deployment of new architectural solutions for network virtualization and cognitive radio networks. The project is about developing and testing a new network architecture, to enable innovation through programmability and control of network functions and protocols. For doing this, we solve different technical challenges. These are about network virtualization, open architecture, reconfigurable software suite, virtual base station and decision support system. Another important part of the project is regarding the development of a cognitive virtualization platform, to test the new developed solutions. It is well known that cognitive radio technology is a key concept suggested to use the radio frequency spectrum in a more efficient manner than previous mobile networks. The difference in our case is that the cognition is used not only to provide better resource use for bandwidth but also for other categories of resources like energy/power consumption (by using, e.g., green routing, cooperative/relay networking), hardware utilization (in form of, e.g., virtual Base Stations, cognitive/reconfigurable wireless devices), reduce the cost of supporting the required QoS/QoE, new business models. Cognition and virtualization concepts are used to increase the efficiency of network management and resource utilization as well as to reduce the power consumption and the cost of supporting the expected QoS/QoE for communication. The expected research results will be tested, among others, in the world-wide virtual network PlanetLab.