LAVASAN VILLA, Gisue Hariri, Mojgan Hariri

Project’s Name ـ Function: Lavasan Villa, Residential
Office ـ Company: Hariri & Hariri Architecture
Lead Architect: Gisue Hariri, Mojgan Hariri
Design Team: Markus Randler
Associate Architect & Project Manager: Navid Ghasemi
Location: Lavasan,Tehran, Iran
Total Land Area ـ Area Of Construction: 930 m2, 1120 m2
Client: Ramin & Rana Varasteh
Date: 2011 -   2015
Photographer: Moein Hosseini
Website: www.haririandhariri.com
Email: info@haririandhariri.com

Perhaps the clearest answer to the question posed in the title is: *“Because this building knows how to defend itself!”* But before we recount the story behind this short sentence, we would like to refer to a theoretical perspective from Richard Neutra (1892–1970). In his book *Survival Through Design*, Neutra writes:

 “\[…] A house can be designed like a monthly salary. In this case, satisfaction with the design is derived from habituation. But there is a completely different approach: designing for a sensation like the thrill of romance, designing for a moment, for a fraction of a second. \[We have seen that] the experience of an entire lifetime can be condensed into a few memories. This is closer to the latter approach to design: blending with the excitement of an event, as opposed to the first approach that deals with something fixed and tedious. The value of a wide sliding door opening to a garden lies in exactly this. \[…] In this complex world, the designer should not act solely based on pure aesthetic principles rooted in outdated assumptions. \[…] Whether we are aware of it or not, whether the created environment pleases or disturbs us, in any case, the sound of a room, as a complex acoustic phenomenon, even in its slightest resonances, has an effect on us.” (Neutra, 1954, cited in Mallgrave, 2016)

The phrase “This building knows how to defend itself”* was, in fact, the last sentence uttered by the client and owner of the Lavasan Villa, designed by the Hariri sisters, in a phone conversation with us. We had asked her to be present on the day the jury for the Building of the Year Award visited the site, emphasizing that since the architects were not in Iran, the depth of their work might not be fully grasped by the jury, and it would be best if the architects or she herself were there to provide explanations. Her reply was simply: *“This building knows how to defend itself.”

As it turned out, the first jury team, after visiting the building, insisted that the second team should also see the project, rather than relying solely on the reports and the final meeting. For fairness, the finalist projects were either visited by the full jury in one stage or visited twice.

So, what was the story? Apparently, the Lavasan Villa by the Hariri sisters had easily passed all the rigorous and profound criteria of the Building of the Year Award in Iran. Not only did the project fully meet the judging criteria, but it also went beyond them. The building was more than just a cantilevered form on Lavasan’s sloped terrain; its successive spatial explosions deeply impressed viewers. It stepped into realms of architectural value often overlooked or neglected in Iran.

On the surface, the interior decoration had been arranged with exceptional artistry, demonstrating the harmonious coexistence of “architecture and interior design”—a term that is slowly fading from our architectural vocabulary. Interestingly, despite the structural challenges, the building’s engineering had fully met the architects’ needs—an ideal condition that sometimes, unfortunately, is reversed, with architecture serving the structure instead.

“Your thinking is delicate, cold, beautiful, and majestic. The stones you have set tell me this. You draw my attention to that place, and my eyes behold it. They see something that reveals a thought—a thought that is not expressed through sound or speech, but only through shapes placed in a specific relationship to one another. These shapes appear clearly in the light. The relationships between them are not necessarily tied to usability or resemblance; they are the mathematical creation of your mind—they are the language of architecture. By using raw materials and starting from conditions somewhat dependent on utility, you have created specific relationships that have moved my emotions… This is architecture.” (Le Corbusier, 1923, cited in Balkhari, 2016)

In simpler terms, both Neutra and Le Corbusier, as modern architects—though famed for their white cubic machine-like forms—were deeply concerned with human space. They understood the power of architecture: the power to transform a mound of earth into an imaginative space. Through their writings, they sought to declare the manifestos of their works and to stress the necessity of a *spirit of architecture*. Their emphasis on human psychology and environmental awareness—and their attention to neuroscience, even when it was still in its infancy—shows that in studying the history of modernity in architecture, we have overlooked certain dimensions.

It is noteworthy that Richard Neutra came to Iran in the 1960s at the invitation of Houshang Seyhoun. His arrival coincided with Iranian architects opening their eyes to modern works. Yet they too erred, perceiving modernity solely in the white cube. No one paid attention to the psychological and neuroscientific principles present in Neutra’s work. We became familiar with him through exhibitions and lectures, unaware that he had authored numerous books emphasizing the importance of neuroscience in architecture. In the early 1950s, he put forth an idea far ahead of his time, calling on designers to become biologists—in other words, to focus not only on formal abstraction but also on the flesh, blood, and psychological needs of those who inhabit the built world.

Aside from the client’s famous sentence, there is a twist: the Hariri sisters did not consider their work in Iran to be worthy of this award. The neighboring plots to this property are empty, and looking at their steep, barren slopes only strengthened our belief in architecture’s power to create human space. One can partly guess why the Hariri sisters were modest about their work. They do not reside in Iran, and their image of the country was shaped not by postcards but by the internet. Even some locals today are influenced by virtual media, let alone those observing from the United States and visiting Tehran for only a few days each year. The Hariri sisters did not see their work as competitive compared to local projects, because some images broadcast of our architecture differ from reality. However, their client, who resides in Iran and likely consulted many offices before commissioning the work, knew the reality well. Both the architects and the client had little to say in self-promotion and entered the award process with professional discipline—despite, surprisingly, some architects claiming that an on-site visit was unnecessary.

In this award, being in architecture—and experiencing it through the senses with a focused, selective eye—was what mattered. This building has moved beyond current architectural norms in Iran and approached a world-class standard. One of the best descriptions of good architecture might be the criteria outlined by Juhani Pallasmaa, as quoted by Mallgrave in *The Architect’s Brain: Neuroscience, Creativity, and Architecture*. In his essay Six Themes for the Next Millennium (1994), Pallasmaa lists six points for reviving the enchantment of architecture: slowness, adaptability, sensuousness, authenticity, idealization, and silence. Along these lines, Pallasmaa writes about visual tactility:

 “Architecture based on the eye analyzes and controls, whereas architecture based on visual touch unites and integrates.” (quoted in Mallgrave, 2010)

Pallasmaa himself, in his works, focuses on the depth of feeling rather than outward form. Therefore, architectural judgment should be carried out with the aid and focus of all the senses.

We believe that the Hariri sisters’ Lavasan Villa, rightfully chosen as Iran’s Building of the Year, carries multiple messages from different perspectives—but the best of them remains the one the client declared over the phone, with complete confidence and satisfaction: “This building knows how to defend itself!”

Our recommendations, based on the experience of the Building of the Year Award in Iran:

1. Pay attention to global architectural knowledge, especially trends that are not superficial or fashion-driven but are rooted in deeper layers of world architecture.
2. Move beyond architectural formalism, particularly when it leads to the elimination of human presence, increased costs, detachment from the realities of architecture, and harm to personal and national interests.
3. Move beyond verbose but low-value architecture that attempts to justify itself with scattered statements far from the essence of architecture.
4. Move beyond image-making in architecture, especially where attempts are made to “correct” a three-dimensional space by reducing it to a two-dimensional photograph.
5. Move beyond purely formal aesthetics, especially those based on ancient patterns that have no place for contemporary space and future-oriented thinking. As aesthetic standards are often measured by Western cultural norms, they may even conflict with our sensibilities.
6. Increase attention to new interdisciplinary knowledge in architecture education, particularly architecture informed by neuroscience.
7. Promote architectural design based on human-centered criteria.
8. Pay attention to multi-sensory architecture.
9. Encourage experienced and skilled consulting engineers and other architectural sectors—often working on state projects without regard for global architectural discourse—to engage with contemporary currents in architecture.