“Designing in Teheran” PROJECT B

The building looks like a solid parallelepiped that has to be hollowed out of the superfluous parts.
So there is a central courts that can be reached by two passages through the two main facades.
We think that the building can suggest different ideas:
- a bazaar for the commercial floors, not interrupted by small fixed spaces;
- the core of the village for the superior floors with many aerial bridges that connect the
direction offices in different ways;
- a naturally stratified village for the global perception of the centre when the visitor is inside
(“Masule” village).
A geometric net covers the building like a second skin. The idea comes from the Iranian traditional
drawing, studied in a contemporary key. The shape, obtained by the subtraction of some elements,
seems a natural drawing, to emphasize the analogies between the geometric traditional drawing,
often seen in the historical constructions (that in the dome texture, more than all, makes a clear
similitude to the crystal geometry and fractal geometry too), and the shapes of the natural world.
Starting from a girih (polygonal modular composition) we produce the final texture using several
different mirror axes.
This feedback process (the geometry comes from nature, we start from geometric shapes to come
back to natural shapes) intends to show the importance of the environment, goal that architecture
achieves through energetically efficient buildings and eco-compatible design solutions.
The net on the walls works like a brise soleil. On the top, apart from this function, it is the bearing
structure of the glass roof.
The glass roof protects the internal court against atmospheric agents and allows to collect the
rainwater to use it in the toilets of the flats and offices and in the hanging gardens.
The glass walls and roof realise a sort of winter garden inside the building with a temperate
microclimate.
The vertical and horizontal links mark the space and show the different floors through the different
colours.
Going up, the relation between solid and empty spaces reverses roles and lets wide areas clear, that
can be used as elevated “square-terraces”, meeting places and/or hanging gardens.
All the services, the stairs and the lifts, the toilets and safety stairs, the entrance to the apartments,
are located in the east side of the building.
The surfaces of the building are covered with opaque glasses, where there are walls (these glasses
surfaces can be illuminated by night), and with transparent glasses, in the remaining parts. The
footbridges are made with two balustrade-beams with a reticular shape and a coloured glass floor.
The particular atmosphere of the executive offices is not created with specific furniture, but with the
division of the area into independent sub areas and, above all, with particular points of view that
you can have from the glass-wall of each office.