16 | The Moment

16|The Moment is a residential apartment building in Mashhad designed for a multi-generational family. The brief called for a residential unit of approximately 300 square meters for the parents, four units of 150 square meters for the children, and maximum additional saleable area on a 510-square-meter plot. The central design challenge was the proper separation of dual-unit floors while eliminating shared elevator lobbies without compromising single-unit floors. The architects adopted the familiar pattern of residential apartments from Tehran's vernacular modernism of the 1350s-1360s (1970s-1980s), known in Mashhad as the khorjini (saddlebag) plan. To reduce level differences on single-unit floors, adjusting floor heights led to the creation of a duplex unit in the building's middle, generating eighty square meters of surplus saleable space that compensated for area lost to the central courtyard void and increased lobby space. By introducing other characteristics of late-modern apartment typology — semi-open spaces on the floors, positive and negative spaces on the facades, and the separation of private and public areas in certain floor plans — the design reinvents this familiar pattern based on contemporary needs. 16|The Moment won Second Place in the Apartment Buildings category at the 20th Memar Award (2020).