Kohan Ceram Central Office Building

The Kohan Ceram Central Office Building in Tehran is a narrative experiment in architectural materiality. The project began with the design of a central office for a brick manufacturing plant, built upon an existing structural frame. The core question was whether the granularity of a single building could create a strategic shift in the urban landscape, occupying a position where urban and neighbourhood scales coexist simultaneously. The design's central innovation is the Spectacle Brick — a cellular entity that incorporates a transparent element within itself while simultaneously fulfilling the roles of masonry, finishing, and insulation. No longer merely a wall, it becomes also a window; no longer merely a skin, it organizes interior space from outside in. It admits natural light in a mysterious manner that places the reading of space in a state of suspension, and causes the building to be introverted at one moment and extroverted at another. Through its semi-transparent nature and the notion of permeability — penetrating from outside to inside while accommodating green space within its sections — the Spectacle Brick redefines the boundary between interior and exterior. Rather than choosing between the project's various dualities, the design forms a broader spectrum in which meanings shift: single skin becomes double skin, exterior wall becomes interior wall, introverted quality by day becomes extroverted quality by night. Kohan Ceram won First Place in the Public Buildings category at the 19th Memar Award (2019).