Khorsand Office Complex

Tehrān, Iran

City of Tehran is an absurd constructed landscape, where density is achieved through massive deployment of a mid-rise building type; which is that of four to five storey apartment buildings. The dominance of this type has yielded a somewhat absurd urban morphology whereas the exterior manifestation of the apartment buildings from a street point of view is limited to a single two-dimensional facade.

Furthermore, the investors demand architects to design for a spatial scenario whereas maximum allowed envelope is built to maximize the profit return of the investment. This intensifies the importance of the facade design in the overall process of conception, development and implementation of buildings since [over]investment on this single facade with the maximum depth of 20 to 40 centimetres to be actually designed is the way to make the building architecturally attractive.

In designing this complex, the architects considered the exterior architectural surface or facade as a micro-section that needs to be architecturally developed as opposed to graphically composed, taking into consideration that construction techniques, technologies and choice of materials are not compromising the financial reasonability/feasibility of the investment as a whole.

Conceptualizing the facade as a neutral yet animated surface that stands in contrast to the humdrum of adjacent urban facades each striving to stand out with somewhat an exhibitionist attitude, was the key feature that allowed their project to stand out as a unique piece of engineering and artistic intervention in its spatial context. 

Source: Aga Khan Trust for Culture