Abadan Residential Apartment

The project brief was a residential building over three storeys — three separate apartments and a caretaker’s unit on the ground floor. A view to the airport (to the west of the building) from the upper floor was among the client’s wishes.

Volume. The building has been designed as a single volume whose dimensions are set by the required spaces. Service functions — circulation, service ducts, kitchen and so on — were laid out within the volume according to the position of the land, accesses and light potentials. The volume was then folded like a roulade, with the living spaces and the unit divisions taking shape in the vertical. The presence of the service boxes affects the volume and the spaces, creating ups and downs that shape the openings. Through cantilevers, parts of the volume turn into canopies that shield the light-wells from direct sun.

Another factor that shaped the orientation of the volume is the Abadan airport runway to the west of the building. The openings on the third floor toward the runway play an important role in giving the volume direction. The direction of the volume without the third-floor openings is north-south, following the fold direction; once the openings open up, the architecture on the upper floor abruptly rotates against its geometric direction.

Sustainability in architecture. In Abadan’s hot and humid climate, heat and light are among the most important issues. Summer mean air temperature is 45 °C. The placement of the windows on the west and the view to the airport — at the client’s request — forced the designer to use cantilevers and canopies that emerge from the form itself: tracking the sun across the day, they shade the light-wells and windows, blocking direct sunlight from entering the building and preventing the greenhouse effect. A second technique is a specific opening detail: a 70 cm-thick wall of multiple narrow openings, the glass set deep at the back. To use the resulting wall thickness, the spaces between the openings are turned into built-in wardrobes.

Structure and services. The structure is steel. To avoid bracing in the main façade, and to handle the 1.5–3 m cantilevers, the structural engineer adopted a bolted steel skeleton with rigid moment frames. The roofs are light Niazit steel-joist with Yonolite blocks — covering big spans with low thickness and lightening the steel frame. The mechanical system is two-piece air-handling units with a central cooling system. Their placement was a major concern for the designer: split-AC units have always disfigured the façades of buildings in southern Iran. The solution was two boxes on the north and south fronts, connected to outside air, where the air-handlers sit.

Jury Commentary

Mehdi Alizadeh: The choice of materials — steel structure and masonry infill surfaces — is uniform. The design method of the wall surfaces is consistent with the materials and with the way they are used. The project is, in its end piece, a piece of living city.
Kamran Afshar Naderi: The house sits on a very small site and has nonetheless produced a distinguished piece. Its architectural design and concept were formed through a fully conscious process. Climate has been considered, and that attention has seriously affected the building’s form. The elevation is designed in a remarkably inventive way as a three-dimensional system, and its design is tied to the whole. The project carries a contemporary structure and face while it strikes a delicate connection to the traditional architecture of southern Iran.