TASH STORE AND SHOWROOM

3rd Place, Renovation — 14th Memar Award

This project is the renovation of a commercial unit in a building approximately 40 years old with a steel structure in Tehran's commercial center. The commercial unit, with an area of approximately 100 square meters, has a five-meter-wide urban window and an average depth of fourteen meters.

In the renovation, the ground floor was executed as a combination of platforms and a sloped movement ramp using masonry materials. Given the age of the steel structure and the design team's emphasis on limiting structural changes, the second floor was executed in lightweight construction (steel framing and MDF sheets). A full-length steel beam was added to the existing structure along the connecting staircase.

The Tash store and showroom offers clothing with a black and white color palette, in which the body of the model or mannequin is transformed into an abstract form: in dark areas, body contours are diminished or even erased by the absence of shadows against the dark background; in light areas, body contours gain clarity through the intensity of shadows against the bright background. The project's core idea focuses on the potential of these intensified or diminished curved lines to create spatial form.

The section is a closed curve that changes shape as it moves in depth, creating diverse spatial relationships. The interface with the street is a transparent two-story wall that ultimately conveys the perception of the deep interior space as a spatial extension of the project's urban window. The linear environmental graphic designed on the urban window facade, with an arabesque pattern and a classic light element placed in the entry space, stands in ironic contrast to the project's minimal, minimalist language.