Sheikh Bahaei Residential, Shahab Alidoost, Sona Eftekharazam

Project Name: Sheikh Bahaei Residential
Architects: Alidoost and Partners
Manufacturers: AutoDesk, Pouyesh Tahvieh, Knauf, Azarakhsh Brick, Adobe, Nooraneh, RAK, Shouder, N.D.A Co.
Lead Architects: Shahab Alidoost, Sona Eftekharazam
Design Team: Amir Niknafs, Hamideh Raoufzadeh, Sahand Mohades, Hamed Bakhtiari, Mehrdad Karchani, Parisa Pouyafard, Sama Khaki, Mina Mehrdad, Ida Ehsani, Venus Entezami, Kourosh Amirshahi, Mojgan Abdollahi, Ali Izadi, Niloufar Mohammadzadeh, Ehsan Danandeh
Design Assistant: Amir Niknafs
Client: Mr Amiri
Execution: Alidoost and Partners
Construction Manager: Arash Sheibani
Structural: Samad Aghazadeh
Mechanical and Electrical: Esco Jam Co. (Pouya Harandi, Amir Hedayat)
City: Tehran
Country: Iran
Area: 30000 m²
Year: 2022
Photographs: Masih Mostaajeran, Parham Taghiof, Deed Studio
Website: www.alidoost-partners.com
Instagram: shahabalidoost
Email: info@alidoost-partners.com

Sheikh Bahaei residential building project is located in Vanak, Tehran.This building is constructed with a plot area of nearly 4800m2 and gross area of nearly 30000m2 including a ground floor, three basement floors seven residential floors. The main problem in relation to the project design was based upon two major issues. First, how can the number of apartments that are adjacent to each other be reduced despite the numerousness of the apartments on each floor in order to avoid disturbing the residents’ comfort? Second, how can the density of the residential units in a complex with numerous units be represented in the main building facade as a factor with identity and function in order to establish an integrity between the internal and external parts of the building?
Apropos of the first issue, considering the relatively extensive plot width (almost 75m), two completely separate zones (from the ground floor upward) were assumed leading to the division of the plan of the residential floors into two blocks with 5 or 6 adjacent units. This resulted in better privacy of the units and less-populated and less-crowded common spaces and, consequently, more comfort of the residents.
In a parallel way and in order to represent the concept of density on the southern side of the project, the building facade skin, including the semi-open spaces, was added to the building, which played the role of a barrier between the urban open space and the closed space of the residential units. Dividing this facade skin into small-scale pixels not only represents the numerousness of the rear-side residential units but also improves the semantic and visual relationship of the building with its surrounding urban environment through creating spaces with small scale in volume. The small-scale spaces also increase the possibility of the addition of greenery in the volume and, besides, improve the quality of life. Moreover, by changing the form and scale of the pixels, it is attempted to provide a better coordination with the diverse typologies of the residential units. For instance, yards with higher roofs were created for duplex units and also wider balconies were provided for bigger units. As such, by making the facade skin more flexible, this appended element was, in practice, dissolved in its rear-side volume and became an inseparable part of it. An intervention to the design of the existing structure was the addition of the entrance space to the building, which indeed converts the entrance gate commonly used in residential projects into an intermediary space between the inner and outer spaces of the building. As for selecting the material for the building facade and considering the form-oriented approach of the main facade and presence of the intermediary space in the balconies, which have been designed mainly as shader on the southern facade, it was decided to use a dominant material (industrial bricks) and avoid color diversity and visual disturbance as the main approach.
It should be noted that the designer team attempted to provide comfort for numerous residential units of the project, improve the quality of the light-passing walls by using porous skin in the building facade and creating a small scale proportionate to the urban landscape, and also provide the ground for using greenery in the living space of the residents.