Contemporary Architecture

Innovation Centers at Amirkabir University, Tehran

Location: Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran

Client: Vice President for Science and Technology of the Presidency

Architect: Panah Company — Behnam Miranian

Design team: Mona Afrough, Ahmadreza Khodakaram, Siamak Ghafouri, Elahe Barani, Mahsa Masoudi, Nazanin Zakeri, Davood Mohamad Hasan, Arezoo Khosravi

Construction & supervision: Mahdi Rezaei, Zahra Khedri

Content production: Arezoo Shagaldi, Reza Oskouie

Graphic design: Arezoo Shagaldi

Photography: Mohamad Hasan Etefagh, Mohamad Keshvari

Area: 3,300 m²

Panah Company — Behnam Miranian — Form and colour for seven innovation centres

Universities, as one of the important elements in the transformation of every society, take on different missions according to the conditions and demands of their time and place. In the new generation of universities, the emphasis is placed on the flourishing of the students' creativity, and the outcome of this attitude is the training of entrepreneurs and the offering of creative solutions in the face of constraints and problems. One of the structures that directs and accelerates the conditions for the formation and the growth of students' creative ideas is the presence of innovation centres in universities.

Schematic overview of all seven innovation centres designed at Amirkabir: a model of the campus with the seven centres marked in colour — Aerospace, Electrical & Mechanical, Civil, Medical Engineering, Polymer, Textile and Computer — each with a small photograph of its built space alongside.

The present project was planned with the aim of building innovation centres in seven faculties of Amirkabir University of Technology.

An interior partition of one of the white centres: a glass-walled meeting room set into a stripped concrete-and-wood corridor — the connecting space the architects call 'spatial continuity.'

Industrial corridor of one of the faculty buildings: the new innovation centre sits inside the older 1970s shed, behind a sliding glass wall — the existing building 'survives,' the new project lives inside it.

As a first step, by surveying the faculties and the existing spaces, an appropriate place was chosen in each faculty for the creation of a coworking space, a space for discussion and exchange, rest and gathering. This selection was made in such a way that it would have the greatest possible connection to the other spaces of the faculty, and — beyond a good communicative position — would lack an appropriate use, so that, through the change of use, the stated objective could be achieved.

Textile Engineering Innovation Centre — entrance: a white tilted volume bears the faculty's mark and the word 'Innovation' written across the wall — the lobby of the smallest of the seven centres.

Polymer Innovation Centre — exterior: an old brick faculty wing renovated with a new glass entrance and a wood-louvre canopy — the existing fabric kept, the threshold redrawn.

In the design of this kind of space, one of the principles of particular importance is spatial continuity. The creation of a relating space between architectural elements, in the design of an innovation centre, makes possible the linking of the different spaces and gives rise to a connecting space. In the whole, we have tried, by the use of form and colour, to let each innovation centre, in different faculties within Amirkabir University of Technology, present itself as distinctive, and become a stimulant for future development and expansion.

Aerospace Engineering Innovation Centre: a coral-orange floor and ceiling under a glass-walled meeting room, with the words 'Avionics, Aerospace engineering' across the back wall — the faculty's discipline written into the colour of the space.

Blue cowork of one of the centres: long parallel tables of office chairs on a blue-painted floor, with windows on three sides — the design of the work-of-many that the project's brief asks for.

Medical Engineering Innovation Centre — entrance facade: a long yellow band of glass doors opens onto a lounge of coloured ottomans, with a stone-tiled threshold in front — yellow as the colour of this faculty.

Inside the Medical Engineering centre: a curved yellow wall folds around a small lounge, with a low circular meeting table at the foot of the curve — the form-and-colour move of the project, intensified at this faculty.

In this project, by bringing the work space and the other associated spaces with their own particular characteristics into the heart of the faculties, we tried to form an inner-organisational community that would facilitate the process of networking between the experts and the able people, on one side, and the investors and supporters, on the other.

Computer Innovation Centre — entrance: black-painted floor and ceiling, with a yellow accent wall to the left bearing the centre's name 'WAGON' — the faculty's industrial culture, given its own room.

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Innovation Centers at Amirkabir University, Tehran

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