The Hormuz story is a cultural resort developed by the private sector active in the cultural sphere, following an invitation from local art groups who had been performing the "Soil Carpet" event at the project site for years. Its aim is to establish a presence in accordance with the customs of artists and tourists while empowering the island's people. The "Majara" (Adventure) project is part of the "Presence in Hormuz" initiative, which began in 2015 and, based on the concept of urban acupuncture, stimulates small points in the city, connecting them over time to initiate a flow of change and dialogue that becomes the voice of the island's people.
What's to my benefit, what's to the benefit of all: Architecture can act as a connecting link between government, capital, and various groups of people, and it has the capacity to move from a position of passivity in the distribution of benefits and strive to the best of its ability to intervene in distributing benefits among different groups. One of architecture's paths for intervening in benefit distribution is engaging with the project's economy and the issue of gross domestic product to reach social optimization. This goal has been pursued in the Presence in Hormuz project and in the Majara resort as part of it through several paths: 1. Affordable construction, which economically benefits the client. 2. Allocating a greater share of the construction budget to local labor over expensive materials, which benefits the local population. 3. A resilient spatial scenario and organization for the future to meet unforeseen needs, which benefits both the client and the island. 4. Using Iranian and accessible materials, which while reducing transport costs is productive and carries national benefit. 5. Creating conditions for middle-class tourist entry instead of unconventional tourists who do not spend in the host community and present non-standard social patterns to the people.
Infinite "Nader Khalili"s: Presence in Hormuz is a process that, before building structures, attended to community participation and trust-building. The Majara project, following the Rong prototype, was built as a collection of earthen domes using Nader Khalili's superadobe method, and instead of a large monolithic volume, was broken down to achieve a human scale. By situating the complex on lower ground, it increasingly avoids dominating people and lacks the commanding presence of large projects. The fine-grained character, beyond making the project replicable and creating flexibility in its spatial scenario, aligns with the construction methods of small-scale trades existing on the island and enables their entry into the construction process.
Swelling of the Earth: The colorful granules of soil, sand, gravel, and stone that have shaped the island's salt dome — and Majara has been woven like a carpet of granular knots: sand grains dredged from the Hormuz pier, mixed with gravel, have filled rows of sandbags that form dome-shaped granules, as if the earth itself swelled to create living space. The dome granules are linked in a molecular, organic, and flexible structure in the form of small communities, hosting flexible and changeable spatial scenarios. Together they form the entire complex — a complex with indeterminate boundaries that can expand or change as needed.