•Location: Punak •Client: Dr. Fariborz Jahantighi •Contractor: Aref Khodaei •Structural engineer: Vahid Gharekhaninia •Mechanical systems: Hoofar Esmaeili •Electrical systems: Nina Amoushahi •Collaborators: Kianoush Dehkordi, Sara Soltani, Mahsa Mohseni, Mohammad Bassak, Maryam Azizi, Farnaz Zahedi, Aria Bejervani •Land area: 220 square meters •Built area: 1,000 square meters
Approximation House endeavors to offer a different quality of urban living by returning to the roots of human inclinations and drawing closer to nature. It is a house that reconstructs other modes of the human experience of dwelling in nature — such as sleeping under the open sky, watching the stars, or being in close contact with trees and birds. In recent years, with the destruction of a large portion of Tehran's gardens, birds that have long coexisted with urban dwellers have lost their favorable living spaces in the city. In this project, vertical green spaces on the building's exterior, together with trees planted on the facade and rooftop, alongside the wooden texture of the facade, create a natural ecosystem that can serve as a haven for birds that find no place to rest in the polluted urban environment. The sound of birds adds another dimension to the architectural space. A living wall rises from the lower courtyard all the way to the green rooftop space. This wall connects the courtyard's greenery to a garden on the roof. In this way, the building's exterior transcends the convention of a two-dimensional facade. On either side of the facade's green zone, terraces overlook the living wall — a space that allows one to enjoy views of the street and the adjacent garden from a private terrace, free from overlooking. The movable wooden lattice of the terraces controls sunlight while defining the private boundaries of the terrace. Unlike many residential apartments in Tehran built for sale, this house was designed for the life of a father and daughter with specific lifestyles, interests, and needs. The house comprises a duplex unit for the father, a duplex unit for the daughter, and a separate floor for social gatherings and entertaining. The rooftop space, extending along the facade's greenery, serves as a shared family garden. A swimming pool and fitness areas are located in the basement levels.
Approximation: The word "approximation" in this project's name is a concept related to the quality inherent in works of art and craftsmanship made by human hands — the very quality that renders handmade works unique and unrepeatable. This concept is employed in contrast to mechanical precision and the reproducibility of industrial and factory-made products. In countries such as Iran, where the human workforce continues to play a vital role in the process of architectural construction and execution, valuing this potential can foreground the human dimensions of a project and distinguish Iranian architecture from that of countries where advanced technologies carry out construction — and at times even design — with virtually no human intervention, in a purely mechanical fashion. Highlighting the quality that craftsmanship adds to the final architectural product naturally does not mean eliminating technology from the construction process; rather, it means foregrounding the possibilities that emerge from the particular conditions of the building process in Iran, aspects that are sometimes dismissed as weaknesses. In the Approximation House project, natural materials take shape in the same variety found in nature, and the imposition of a strict geometric order on natural materials has been deliberately avoided. The process of cutting and shaping these materials — until they are installed in various parts of the project — is carried out by human labor, with the imprecision of the human hand treated as a value. The wooden pieces of the facade are cut in approximate dimensions, with workers given relative freedom in how they shape each piece. The result is pieces of wood that belong to the same family and are similar, yet are not geometrically identical — they are unrepeatable. A quality akin to the approximate resemblance among the fruits of a single tree in nature.