House No. 03

House No. 03 (also known as Building No. 3) in Shiraz by Mehrdad Iravanian falls within the category of conceptual art and evades any aesthetic evaluation. The house resembles an artwork in which every component has been shaped in relation to a meaning and narrative independent of the building's practical concerns. Disharmony and the violation of aesthetics are the very subject of the project. The work is entirely experimental and contains within itself contradictions.

Critic Kamran Afshar Naderi observed that the most bothersome contradiction is the plan, based on a traditional rectangular layout from which the building has been constructed — a decision whose spatial outcome does not yield a comprehensible totality. The project is composed of various spatial and artistic episodes and elements placed together in a strange manner. The work oscillates between slovenliness and the most meticulous craftsmanship, and this very contradiction — also reflected in the composition of unrelated, refined-yet-raw elements — is the building's principal quality, making it intriguing. Shortlisted at the 2nd Grand Memar Award (2002).