Designer: Arash Mozafari · Experimental Branch of Architecture (for metropolitan)
Project manager: Pedram Dibazar, Hamid Mahmoudpour
Design team: Vista Goharizadeh, Siavash Ghobraee, Amir Ahmadi Zenoz, Ronak Namdari, Neda Lotfi, Babak Rashedi, Leila Mahmoudpour
Client & construction: Ali Ghanizadeh
Structure: Aria Daneshvar
Supervision team: Hamid Mahmoudpour, Reza Jahanmard, Naser Vazifeh, Alireza Soleimanian
Mechanical & electrical: Rastak Pouya Co. — Kolivand & Rahmati
Photo & film: Soroush Ghobraee, Kiarash Kiaee, Ashkan Seddigh
3D: Saeed Fahimpour, Mohammad Farhadi
Location: Pour-Ebtehaj Street, Mahdizadeh Street, no. 35, Kashanak, Tehran
Site area: 665 m²
Total built area: 3,010 m²
Date: 2007–2011 / 1386–1390
Kashanak Residential Complex contains eleven dwellings — between 75 and 230 m² — plus a lobby, a function hall, a pool and a sauna. The occupants are members of the client’s extended family, so the overall scheme and surface area of each space was shaped as far as possible around their needs.
City regulations. The project is a controlled fight with Tehran’s municipal building rules, which assume rectangular sites — buildings with two façades and a 60 percent +2 m occupancy, with light-wells. Here the lot was a near-triangular trapezium, narrowing from a very small base on the north-east dead-end to a much wider base on the lane to the west. Given the 60 percent + 2 m cap, one extra façade level was possible beside the western edge and a complete northern façade was possible at three metres’ setback. The number of elevations thus rose from two to four: north-east, north, west and south-west. This strategy then propagated down to the smaller pieces — based on views, access, play of light and shadow, and natural ventilation, the volume was split into smaller blocks so that, while securing maximum interior area, smaller façade blocks emerge in different directions.
Material. In keeping with the surrounding nature and the colour of the Kashanak semi-mountain ground, Tehrani two-tone (ablaq) brick was chosen for the building, and produced in several stages with different techniques until the desired colour was reached. In the brickwork details, the strongest emphasis was placed on the horizontal lines; corbelling and vertical joints were avoided. The brick texture was carried into the skin of the inner spaces as well.
Access. The complex has access from two streets: Ashianak Street on the north-east, and Mahdizadeh Street on the north-west. The three-metre setback on the north edge connects the two urban accesses and links the north-east and north-west fronts via the passage along the north side of the complex — easing pedestrian and vehicle movement around the site.
Structure and services. The building structure is steel, with fan-coil heating and cooling.
Jury Commentary
Mehdi Alizadeh: The choice of steel structure and brick infill surfaces is uniform. Design method and selected materials are uniform. The plan establishes a partly living connection to the city.
Seyyed Reza Hashemi: For the very beautiful, animated, interwoven volume — though already somewhat ageing — and for the successful use of brick in its finish; for the engaging and inventive brick treatment of the interior light-wells; and, in one word, the strength, maturity and accomplishment of the composition.
Kamran Afshar Naderi: A new register of the brick-faced building that is at once contemporary and proportionate to Iran’s culture and climate. Finding a way around the municipal land-occupation regulations. Creating a particular and engaging façade.
