The White Gallery

The White Gallery in Tehran, designed by Shift Process Practice, won First Place in the Renovation category at the 16th Memar Award (2016). The project is an exercise in rereading the potentials and limitations of the infill typology for an art gallery function. The deliberate distinction between the nature of spatial organization and the formal articulation of the project's interior and exterior emphasizes the inherent complexities of reconciling the duality of typology and function.

The project is simultaneously introverted and extroverted: inside, the spatial organization is formed around the core idea of maximum extension in section. This continuous spatial system extends outward through the project's hollow section. The section-oriented, fluid space enables the emergence of diverse perspectival views of the interior spaces.

From outside and at first glance, the project's formal structure is rigid and separate, composed of abstract Euclidean volumes consonant with the surrounding dense residential fabric. Like the "cabinets of curiosities" that can be considered ancestors of museums and galleries, the White Gallery as a space for representation is full of ambiguities that cannot be understood without entering as a represented space. The plot area is 165 square meters with a total built area of 726 square meters.