Oslo Architecture Triennale
Abarmarz Architecture Experience Office / Elahe Moradi, Hossein Khorassani
The 50-50 project from Iran was recognized as a commended project at the Oslo Architecture Triennale in Norway. The Oslo Triennale has been held since 2000 and is considered the largest architecture event in the Nordic region. The foundation states its mission as challenging and inspiring the fields of architecture and urban planning with an emphasis on social issues. This edition was titled "Mission Neighborhood — (Re)forming Community and Place" and focused on the neighborhood as a horizon for rethinking cities. Accordingly, in early spring 2022, an international call was published for projects, studios, and approaches addressing sustainable, diverse, and thriving neighborhoods. Neighborhoods can be conceived simply as places to live, but they can also create opportunities for people to come together as a "community." The concept of neighborhood has both physical and social dimensions. This call sought visions and examples for shaping better neighborhoods and answers to these questions: What are the practical, architectural, and social characteristics of a good neighborhood? How can we achieve greater "sharing" at the neighborhood scale? How can new urban spaces become more diverse and socially and environmentally sustainable? Many of the submitted projects had managed to present creative content in architectural, cultural, and social dimensions for achieving diverse, generous, and sustainable neighborhoods. A total of 383 projects were received from architects, planners, urbanists, academic centers, artists, activists, and others, from which 6 projects were selected for presentation at the Triennale exhibition and 7 works were recognized as commended. At the main event of the Oslo Architecture Triennale in autumn 2022, guests such as Peter Cook, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Jan Gehl delivered lectures on the edition's theme, and projects by studios including Peter Cook, Link Arkitektur, BIG, and BOGL were exhibited alongside the selected projects. Additionally, 236 submitted projects along with the winning entries are available for virtual viewing on the event's website. The jury for this event consisted of Jenny B. Osuldsen from Snøhetta and professor of landscape architecture at NTNU, Matheus Celik, founder and director of the LINA Foundation, Francesco Garutti, artistic director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Camilla van Deurs, city architect from Copenhagen, and Christine Petersen, director and senior organizer of the Oslo Architecture Triennale and chair of the jury. The 50-50 project by "Abarmarz Architecture Experience Office / Elahe Moradi and Hossein Khorassani" — which had previously won first place in the apartment design competition of Koocheh Magazine — was recognized as commended at this event. The jury stated in their citation about this project:
"50-50 pursues a community-oriented approach to living, whereby residential units are formed around communal functions such as a gym, laundry room, shared kitchen, and living room. Likewise, co-working spaces, workshops, a café, and communal spaces at various levels are neighborhood and urban functions that have been introduced within the residential program. The boundary between city and home is blurred, and the project proposes a micro-city within the metropolis of Tehran. In this project, Abarmarz has beautifully depicted the effort toward a social and accessible, attractive, and sustainable housing with an approach of sharing with the neighborhood." The project description states: The name 50-50 is derived from this project's proposal for organizing "full and empty" and "public and private" spaces. It also references "sharing," which this project pursues as a lifestyle. Iran's most widely known urban planning regulation is arguably the 60-40 rule — a superficial regulation, both physically and qualitatively, that has produced buildings in which open and semi-open spaces are either insignificant or of poor quality. This project proposes a 50-50 ratio in volume instead of the 60-40 ratio in area — meaning the creation of open and semi-open spaces as well as communal spaces amounting to at least 50 percent of the project's total spatial volume. The ever-growing urban population, migration to cities, and rising costs of urban survival are common challenges of today's metropolises. On the other hand, loneliness has become a complex psychological issue in today's world — the existence of solitary individuals who need connection with others, while current structures have made it difficult for them to connect with their surroundings. These issues suggest a new type of architectural structure: sharing — meaning co-working, co-living, and co-leisure. The primary audience of this project are individuals who may not fit the conventional and stereotypical definition of an Iranian family: couples aged 20 to 30 without children, a single father or mother with one child, elderly couples, separated couples, and young singles. In contrast to the majority of today's residential buildings, which have become consumer packages, the project — by adding spaces that serve residents and the neighborhood — strives to infiltrate layers of "production" into masses of "consumption": co-working spaces, a café, a workshop for producing artistic or practical works, and a greenhouse for residents to produce part of their own food. This project attempts to be a small-scale Tehran for everyone — a collage of people and their belongings, buildings as they are — jumbled and disheveled — and their uses in today's Tehran. Citizens with different tastes, diverse cultures, and different stories, and buildings with "variety in form and style" and "program and function."
The project's structure is formed by creating two thick inhabitable and functional piers on two fronts with a small alley-like void in between, which additions transform into a space for neighborly interaction. Circulation spaces, instead of shafts, will pass through this alley and are no longer merely passages. Landings have been extended to provide opportunities for wandering within the volume. Terraces face this alley rather than the street or courtyard — like a reversed panopticon or a genetically modified "Qamar Khanom House." The building mass is a cube suspended between two walls. The two facades of conventional "in-between" projects have become four facades in this project. The two hidden interior facades are shells whose openings are a collage inspired by Tehran's urban facades. The exterior facade has been designed so that it can easily blend into the thousand-hued city of Tehran. But the interior spatial system is arranged in such a way that it can lose the viewer within itself. Programmatically, apart from the single-room residential units, all other needs are met communally: places for socializing alongside daily life. Communal, open, and semi-open spaces at different levels are urban-scale events that have penetrated the volume of the home. Home and city in this project are as close as possible, tumbling into each other — so close that without even opening
a door, merely by passing through a "threshold," we are drawn from the city into the project, and conversely, by opening the door to our private room, we have immediately entered the city. A micro-city, lost in the bustle of the Tehran metropolis.
Footnotes: 1- Nordic: a cultural and geographical region in northern Europe and the North Atlantic, comprising Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, as well as the autonomous territories of Åland, Greenland, Svalbard, and the Faroe Islands. Scandinavia is commonly used synonymously with Nordic, whereas Scandinavia includes only three countries: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.