MULTI BRANDS CAR SHOW | Habibeh Madjdabadi

MULTI BRANDS CAR SHOW

Designed by Habibeh Madjdabadi

Project info:

Function:             Automobile Show room and store

Location:              Suburbs of Karaj (a town near the Capital of Iran with 3 million inhabitants).

Plot size:              5000 sqm

Floor area:          ground floor 840 sqm, mezzanine 400 sqm, basement 840 sqm

Context:              Project is located on a large road that connects Fardis and Malard towns.

The car show is designed to locate in one of the suburban Areas of Tehran, facing a boulevard where there are many other box shape car stores. Although the district is dedicated to the business of dealing automobiles, not a minimum attention is paid to the demonstration of the cars and there is no significant architecture in the district, those stores could be used to sell anything rather than cars.

The intention of the designer is to best demonstrate the cars and putting them in the center of attention. It is designed with the idea of using architecture for providing new and different view points to the cars and giving the visitor maximum possible perspective to see around, back and top of the cars. Automobiles in this design are evaluated and presented as an object of desire.

The idea is realized by mounting the cars on a sloped façade and using mirrors on another sloped surface on the top. The project transforms the classic perception of a façade as a border of interior and exterior space .Here the façade is the negative hollow space carved from the main volume which directly reflects to the interior space.  The defined method of inspecting cars is also the same in the interior space.

The Iranian well known Critic “Kamran Afshar naderi “reviews the design as follow:

 This project is born with the idea of creating a completely different space. The designer’s intention is to avoid the usual neutral showcase for the cars, and vice versa to create a positive architectural space. A space that is able to create a morphologic relation with design of the automobiles. The generous use of the mirrors in this building is to valorize the exhibited objects; in fact the cars can be seen from so many points of view. It is mentionable that use of mirrors, as a main interior design element, has a long story in the Iranian architecture. Mirrors have been also used in small and well decorated jewelry cases for increasing the visual impact of the jewels. In this project, the internal space and the connected roof garden create the right atmosphere and comfort for the buyers to pass a certain time inside the show room, enjoy the view of the cars and discuss about with the dealers. The façade is not a plane surface but a concave space that attracts the attention of the people passing by and invites the sights to explore the internal space. The show room has a distinctive visual character and can be considered as a noticeable landmark. In her design, instead of camouflaging the weak points of the project imposed by the irregular shape of the land (combination of rectangle and circle and transition of a high voltage grid next to the project) Habibeh has tried to valorize the restrictions as opportunities for creating a unique shape that takes benefit of all the possibilities of the land. “