The project brief began with the construction of indoor and outdoor exhibition spaces along with office buildings within an industrial site producing concrete and concrete blocks. The project site is located within the Aptus factory on the outskirts of Karaj.
The intellectual challenge of the project begins where questions arise about the boundary between construction on agricultural lands, substandard fabrics — industrial zones — and residential areas on the city periphery, all intertwined and competing in a tight race to outpace one another, a race that typically ends in favor of low-quality residential fabrics.
Under these conditions, green fabrics, besieged by the density of low-quality construction, typically disappear. More often than not, green spaces and agricultural lands are the losers.
The question posed in response to this situation took shape around how one could create a model for establishing a win-win dynamic benefiting both sides — green space and built space.
The next issue in suburban construction is a model for affordable building that keeps pace with contemporary construction quality. This issue, combined with the need to showcase the factory's products, gave rise to the project's material idea, which sought to eliminate interior and exterior finishing. The factory's concrete blocks were used to construct the entire interior and exterior system of the project.
Using a single material in suburban fabric patterns is another strategy that can effectively improve the quality of this type of construction.
The mass-forming strategy, based on the initial question, sought to find a solution for simultaneously shaping the exterior, interior, and landscape of the project. In this strategy, instead of placing function as one large box on the ground with green space or outdoor space formed separately, each space was given its own independent character. Each spatial box was seen as a separate volume based on its functional definition, and the voids between these spatial boxes created green space connected to the interior. Layered connections between spaces were a theme created in this project. The simultaneous experience of exterior and interior emerged through intersections of transparent layers. Reducing materials to a single type increased the perception and connection with the outdoor space, and as daylight changes, this quality also undergoes variations perceptible across the different layers of each space.
Projects of this kind provide an opportunity to envision a pattern for suburban and affordable fabrics.