The project intends to give form through order, and in order resides the energy that creates the form of architecture.
The base ideas of the project have their roots in the contradiction of things and concepts that for centuries have connoted history… interacting in the same building that hides these contradictions in its own architectural functions… like the contradiction that combines the housing units with working and commercial activities…functional and social incongruities that we have perceived, understood and exasperated as the strength point of the project. Order and Disorder; Empty and Full; Houses and Offices are the present complexities.
A first contradiction lies in the shell form, a huge white cube, semitransparent, so simple and orderly only to contain in it’s interior an apparent absolute disorder… this interior constituted of the office cells, versatile in their internal organization (Office Cell type A-B-C), a diverse internal distribution that relates to the demands of different companies. The cells in this independent disorder are result of a centrifugal force that disperses the material in eddies and lumps, where it annuls any possibility of perceiving an organizational principle. However, their unity is in the labyrinth paths that enable one to enjoy a space that varies, not only by the depth of the shadows during the changes of the day but mainly by the continuing breakthroughs in the visual sense given by horizontal and vertical voids created by the remaining material subtracted from the cubic shell.
The second contraction is related to the houses, created as architectural transgression and as a return to the basic principles of family life, the houses created as so, distance from the privileged vision that we see in the last 50 years of architecture, this is, the vision of living in a high level in order to dominate the city, a vision of a chaotic city that does not think about the spirit of the soul. Our conception is to recover this spirit from within the interior of the family, inverting the concept of habitat luxury relating the panoramic view with the intimate luxury of having a vegetable garden in their own piece of land and demonstrating the great love of producing vegetables, profound spirit of cultivation of the inner self.
The third contradiction is that between full-empty, in that emptiness that we have identified between nature and building, full as immensely heavy, and nature that through its light structure (branches, leaves, flowers) are opposites. The houses emerged in the air, below a “forest” of many trees that support them (a symbol of human life), the symbols and metaphors are endless, we can image the house as a fruit or flower from the tree, or as in fairy tale fascinating every child, and the idea of being able to live high on a tree, are all present in children’s imagination, an imagination that would help us face our reality that is often too serious and may even hurt.
The project responds to the mission of searching for an architecture that rejects preconceived models and languages to shape the requirements and complex needs of the individual. Forms that are created each time by an interpretation of reality, which derive from its multiplicity and mobility its raison d’être; spaces and strategies that transform the architecture into devices capable of producing report undefined open spaces to explore and recreate. Architecture built through collaborative and participatory dynamic, capable of inserting new social and environmental balance; architecture to transform the lived area in a mobile and dynamic system capable of responding to stimulations of the community. The project aims to redevelop and enhance the area as a new urban centre, not putting it in conflict with the existing, but living with it and drawing strength from it. The system develops in the entire designated area defined by the continuous profile of the Vali Asr street, 8 km long that features a variety of commercial buildings. We created a building that respects the façade of the road giving no further difference in language but giving a new purifying breath of architecture, a simple presence that manifests it’s belonging through it’s monumental self… The building assumes a monolithic, purifying form compared to the urban texture, its symmetric static shape is interrupted by its elements, which give dynamism but also balance … through the weight of the houses and the lightness of the interior patio. On ground floor, the unexpected asymmetric opening (emptiness) invites to stop and enter, this void appears at the entrance, followed by a path of glass curtain wall of commercial activity, giving the sensation of suspension or rising to this big white monolith. The weight of the housing units that skilfully tries to counterbalance this emptiness and that seem to suspend or gravitate, “supported by the force of nature”.
Access area is defined by a small square in the oldest sense of the word: aggregation space, reception and meeting point, receiving and uniting the invading public paths, this architectural square prepares people to face the frenetic working activity. The semitransparent skin that covers the building, projects on the small square a diffuse glow, the same skin coating the building in white, the conscious, of dual role, of containing and conveying large functional complexity and also to transmit, in a way, mutations to the surrounding city, through its night image of lighting effects (the illumination of the cells revealing the soul through the skin of the building: symbolically expressed in work. The variety and versatility of space represents a significant opportunity for cultural enrichment. The entire building seems to undergo a scan perspective from its base linked to its shell through its commercial transparency connected to the street, the white cubical lightness, the offices completely masked by “forest” thick vegetation that in its own role acts as a filter and finally, with the houses on top, where the vegetation becomes a great relaxing garden while still placing the houses directly facing the street.
