University of Tehran 500-units Dormitory | New Wave Architecture

Location: Tehran                                                                                                                                

Gross Area: 43000 SQM                                                                                        

Designed by: New Wave Architecture

Architects_Principal and Director: Lida Almassian / Shahin Heidari

Team: Sara Farahani, Hengameh Ghanbari, Maryam Shokouhi, Rana Abbasi, Mercedeh Shalchi, Taraneh Kamyab, Mahzad Hosseini

Client: University of Tehran

Status: Under Construction

Design Date: 2023

This  project at the University of Tehran is located on a 5,000 square meter site within the Geophysics Institute of the University of Tehran. This location benefits from easy access to public transportation due to its proximity to three main highways of Tehran city. The project is designed to accommodate married faculty members and students of the university.

Due to budget constraints, the project was massed into three expandable blocks. The entrance access to the site extends as a continuous plane, designed as a green pedestrian pathway. The three tall buildings are shifted at the site level to create spatial variety within the public park design. This displacement of the tall buildings also provides green public spaces for the residents. Moreover, the large-scale movement of the volumes stacked on each other creates a visually ambiguous and diverse structure, reminiscent of clouds moving in the sky.

This structural movement breaks the monotonous repetition of rigid city buildings and leads to a diverse and intriguing form, creating open and public spaces that redefine the concept of the traditional Iranian courtyard home. A porous green platform connected to the towers below provides a pleasant recreational space for residents and locations for public facilities and shops.

Due to the limited land available in the university campus, vertical green spaces are considered a main feature of the design. Given the large scale of the project, traffic planning, access routes, placement of public and private spaces, and maintaining views and visual privacy of Tehran’s metropol played a crucial role in shaping the project’s concept.

The concrete facade of the project uses two shades of gray — dark and light — to emphasize the heavy and sudden movements of the building masses, adding visual variety and durability.