- Designers: Elaheh Mo'azzami and Elham Mo'azzami
- Execution team: Metal — Jamshidi and Haroot Aleksanian; Wood — Sadeghpour; Electricity — Rajabi; Plexiglas — Tamjidi
- Photographs: Habibeh Majdabadi
Elaheh Mo'azzami graduated in 1983 from Honar University in the field of architecture. She has done projects on interior design for 20 years.
Elham Mo'azzami graduated in 1990 from Azzahra University in the field of fabric design. She has worked since then in the fields of design and interior design with Mo'azzami and associates.
The sports- and ski-equipment store, located in the commercial section of Burje Kuhe-Noor (the Kuh-e Noor Tower) in Farmanieh, is a recent work by Mo'azzami & Associates Interior Architecture Consultants. In this store, every element — the ladder, the fitting-room enclosure, the merchandise shelves and the display windows — has been designed with care and taste.
The principal materials are wood, metal and glass. Metal is used in matt and polished finishes in combination with the wood. For the wood, beech veneer was chosen, whose warm orange tone counters the cold dark blue of the ceiling.
The dark blue of the ceiling, with its luminous points, evokes the night sky and its stars. Light perforated metal panels are hung at different heights from the ceiling on cables; they bring variety to the ceiling and act as filters that softly diffuse the ceiling lighting (image 1).
Blue, as the complement to the orange of the ceiling and of the metal ladder, brings variety to the otherwise uniform colour of the wooden cabinets and shelves.
The stands and partitions have gentle curves which are exploited from both their convex and their concave sides. The location of the skis on the wall forms the wall of the fitting-room (images 3 and 5), and the rear surface of the outer display window serves, on the inside, as the back of a small bench. Transparent plexiglas boxes in the central part of the store display smaller items such as eyewear; they are tied at top and bottom by metal cables anchored to the floor and ceiling, suspending the boxes in the air. A lack of precision and skill in working with the plexiglas and in fabricating the boxes has prevented the desired quality of these elements from being attained (image 4).
The floor finish is a kind of laminate flooring with the texture and feel of natural timber boards. This flooring — known as Wiking — recalls the warm, intimate atmosphere of a wooden cabin.
An important point — to which, unfortunately, store-owners pay too little attention — is the way merchandise is displayed and the design is maintained after completion of the work. Unfortunately in this store insufficient care in maintenance has caused heavy items to strike the metal wires and pull them out of their original form. Filling the store with a dense mass of merchandise has likewise prevented the design from being seen at its best.
1 Krenotex laminate flooring, Wiking model.
