A House in the Jolfa District, Isfahan

1st Place: A House in the Jolfa District, Isfahan Location: Jolfa neighborhood, Vank Church Alley Client: Abbas Honari / Structure: Mohammad Nilipour / Mechanical and Electrical: Anis Ebrahimi / Architecture associate: Shirin Sharifonnasab / Decoration: Anita Solati / Construction: Hossein Bazaz, Hamidreza Karami / Graphic: Ali Gorjian / Photo: Kourosh Dabbaghi / Built area: 495 sqm / Site area: 230 sqm Elham Geramizadeh, Ehsan Hosseini — Logical Process in Architectural Design In the old Jolfa neighborhood of Isfahan, at the closest distance from Jolfa Square and the historic churches, where the porous old residential fabric has given way to small plots with new building regulations, designing an infill house that derives its existence from its courtyards is a challenging proposition. A miniature collage of experiential sequences, the presence of time in the irregular connection of spaces, the interweaving of front and back, inside and outside. The project site's location within the historic Jolfa district imposed height restrictions on the house. The house sank into the ground so that a sunken garden — bright and cool — would gather the interior spaces around it. The southern breeze cools in the shadow of the sunken garden and, passing through the interior spaces, finds its way out through the rear courtyards. The very private courtyard — Designing experience: The project took shape based on designing sequences of the house's continuous spaces.