Gallery-Restaurant White Cube

Gallery-Restaurant White Cube in Tehran, designed by Mehdi Bakhshizadeh, won joint Third Place in the Renovation category at the 13th Memar Award (2013). The central theme in the design of White Cube was addressing space and architecture rather than the secondary concerns of decoration and furnishing. The designers' fundamental question was how the architectural space of a restaurant could help visitors achieve a different spatial experience.

The essential point in the gallery design was freeing wall surfaces for the display of artworks. The result of these investigations was achieving a spatial diagram that organizes restaurant and gallery spaces together, with service areas placed semi-suspended at the center of the space, distanced from all surfaces and the ceiling. By opening the space around the kitchen from three sides, natural light penetrates from the courtyard-side hall to the corridor-side hall. The lighting of the White Cube was executed in three stages: providing localized light for users, illuminating the central white cube, and lighting the side walls. The total area is 93 square meters.