Amir Hossein Habibi
National Children & Youth Theatre — 'A Passing through Silence and Light'. Supervisor: Dr. Mohammadreza Shahmiri. Faculty of Architecture, Islamic Azad University Hamedan, Mehr 1379 (Sept-Oct 2000).
This study has been undertaken to attend to the mental-psychological functions, and to the priority of those functions over material and physical ones in architectural design. The title of the study is taken from Louis Kahn's lecture at the ETH Zurich Faculty of Architecture on 12 February 1969 under the title 'Silence and Light', in which Kahn discusses mental-psychological functions in different architectural spaces.
In the design portion of this study, while attending to the mental-psychological function of theatre, the National Children & Youth Theatre complex has been designed in answer to the country's cultural needs. Among its qualities is a design which moves beyond the physical programme — toward the 'mental-psychological function' of theatre — that is, the establishing of a living relation between viewer and performer, and between viewer and viewer, in such a way that the viewer is able, from a new angle and outside everyday conventions, to attend to it not as a reality drawn from ordinary life but as a psychic experience.
Young Scholars' Club — 'Endurance, Dynamism, Change'. Supervisor: Eng. Mohammadreza Jodat. Co-supervisors: Dr. Reza Imani-rad; Eng. Nosratollah Bashiri. Faculty of Architecture, Islamic Azad University Hamedan, Tir 1380 (June-July 2001).
In this project, attention has been given to the formative process and the production of form, working from surfaces of informational exchange — which one could name 'meta-surfaces' — rather than from volumes, in order to arrive at a fresh grasp of space and a new diagram of inside-outside relation. The strategy is one of two volumes: the project's two main volumes — the classrooms and the administrative wing — are placed in a particular opposition and bond with one another. The leading idea is that of Translucent: the ambiguity, opacity, and hesitation that stand against the transparency and the directness of modern architecture. This strategy neither tends to conceal activities and spaces in the project's interest, nor tries to make activities and spaces legible in the project's form; its aim is rather to create depth and space without recourse to perspective.
Faez Mirabian
This research treats the question of mental-psychological function in architectural design and the priority of that function over material and physical ones. The aim is a project-discourse in which mental currents, layers of information, and the arrangement of simple volumes generate a narrative bond between inside and outside.
The five vertical strips presented show, in order: Site Plan, Exterior, Interior, Interior, and Section of the scheme.