Redefining Life in the Heart of the Desert
Nim Rokh is a single-family dwelling on three floors, on a south-facing plot in one of Kerman’s developing townships — a township governed by regulations that allow variable building densities.
This building carries within its memory and lived experience the mud bricks, the emotional wounds of earthquakes, and the ruins of Bam Citadel — losses whose void will never be filled. Nim Rokh is a poetic attempt to reconstruct the bond with history while responding to the everyday needs of life in its own time.
In its first encounter, this building chose a density pattern that retreats before the desert’s encroaching sky to find its place among its neighbours; yet subsequently, with a stepped massing, it connects itself to the sky. Nim Rokh, against the prevailing trend, has relinquished its legal building rights and, by reducing the number of floors and the built area, has answered this question: “What are the advantages of opting out of the lucrative competition for density and additional floors?” This question assumes redoubled importance in residential townships, where the fever to exploit every legal and illegal potential has overtaken the building industry.
A Bridge Between City and Sky
By splitting the cubic volume of the building, narrow and lively alleyways have been created that establish a connection between the passer-by and the building. This quasi-alleyway is the product of a trade-off between claiming the sky and leaving the ground unbuilt — a traditional alley that in today’s cities is being eliminated and replaced by streets.
Dialogue with the Neighbour
By rotating its volume, Nim Rokh has transformed itself from a rigid, lifeless structure into a living, organic building. This building, weary of the monotonous and lifeless layout of residential townships, acts like a rebellious soldier in a regimented parade: while its comrades stare grimly ahead, it has turned its head toward the other, and only its profile — its nim rokh — is visible. The building’s facade, with two small windows on the upper floors like two ears, evokes a human profile that, with a poetic defiance against the uniformity of the neighbourhood’s lined-up houses, gazes curiously at its neighbour and strives to establish a relationship. The question is: “How is dialogue with the city possible without first engaging in dialogue with the neighbour?”
The Hidden Face
By creating a living quasi-alleyway, Nim Rokh has pulled its third wall out of the embrace of the neighbouring wall, so that the third facade — as the true main facade — may find an opportunity for self-expression: a facade that was previously imprisoned in a hidden enclosure between two buildings. This facade bestows a new face upon the building and, by opening a window toward the neighbour, establishes a dynamic bond with it, transforming a silent wall into a living scene and creating fresh opportunities for a new morphological model of urban block development.
