Architectural Details: When Persian Brick Learns New Tricks

Name for entries: The 14th Architizer A+Awards celebrates structure’s new period of craft. Apply for publication on-line and in print by submitting your tasks earlier than the Remaining Entry Deadline on January thirtieth!

Cedrus Studio is a Tehran-based structure agency that focuses totally on residential tasks. Their work highlights the inextricable hyperlink between design and building, leading to considerate and high-quality structure. The properties designed by Cedrus are rooted of their context and showcase a wise consideration to native tradition and traditions whereas assembly the wants of up to date dwelling.

In Iran, the place Cedrus operates, mud brick has historically been used as a constructing materials. This alternative is sensible, contemplating that the area is especially earth, sand, and rock. Not solely is brick building a constructing custom, nevertheless it additionally presents environmental advantages, together with excessive thermal mass and sturdiness. Structurally, brick performs greatest in compression, making it a really perfect materials for vault, dome, arch and load-bearing wall building with out the necessity for extra reinforcement.

A Home Seeking to a Cedrus Tree by Cedrus Studio, Vineh, Iran | Well-liked Alternative Winner, Structure +Brick, thirteenth Architizer A+Awards

This custom has stood the check of time, and to at the present time, brick building retains its fashionable enchantment. Up to date brick building is commonly mixed with different constructing methods and supplies corresponding to metal and concrete. Relatively than diminishing brick’s strengths, these new building approaches improve its capabilities whereas adapting to up to date structural necessities. Cedrus Studio’s A Home Seeking to a Cedrus Tree, situated within the Iranian village of Vine, epitomizes this contemporary strategy.

The home is the results of a renovation undertaking on a website of round 12,378 sq. ft (1,150 sq. meters), that includes a fifty-year-old unfinished constructing. Cedrus Studio remodeled it into the brand new dwelling for a household with two daughters and their spouses. The pure panorama, together with a close-by river and an imposing Cedrus tree on the property, guided the design, creating varieties that evoke the vegetation and the motion of water and wind.

Whereas the home is fashionable, it stays true to conventional Persian structure, the place proportions and geometry are central components. The north aspect of the home, dealing with the mountain, is inflexible and rectilinear, whereas the south aspect, overlooking the river, is fluid.

A Home Seeking to a Cedrus Tree by Cedrus Studio, Vineh, Iran | Well-liked Alternative Winner, Structure +Brick, thirteenth Architizer A+Awards

Conceptual Diagrams for the brick and shutters’ design: A Home Seeking to a Cedrus Tree by Cedrus Studio, Vineh, Iran | Well-liked Alternative Winner, Structure +Brick, thirteenth Architizer A+Awards

Handmade brick is the predominant materials on each the outside and the inside, creating a way of consolation and heat. Despite the fact that there isn’t any hint of conventional Iranian structure within the space, using brick acknowledges the sturdy connection between materials, place and tradition within the area.

The highly effective presence of the Cedrus tree on the property influenced the home design, each spatially and aesthetically. Spatially, it anchors the home to the positioning and enlivens the development in varied methods: by means of shadows solid on a staircase, a silhouette by means of an archway, and its bodily presence within the courtyard. It’s also a symbolic component, expressing the passage of time, nature, and resilience. Aesthetically,  the scales of the Cedrus cone impressed the design of the brickwork and metallic shutters.

A Home Seeking to a Cedrus Tree by Cedrus Studio, Vineh, Iran | Well-liked Alternative Winner, Structure +Brick, thirteenth Architizer A+Awards

Renovation Sequence Diagram: A Home Seeking to a Cedrus Tree by Cedrus Studio, Vineh, Iran | Well-liked Alternative Winner, Structure +Brick, thirteenth Architizer A+Awards

The renovation of the present unfinished constructing introduced varied challenges. It concerned reinforcing the bearing-wall construction to make sure stability. The ceiling top on the decrease stage was inadequate, requiring the decreasing of the inspiration by 90 centimeters (35 inches) together with the resultant extension of the columns.

Furthermore, the general constructing top couldn’t be elevated per native constructing rules. After the removing of pointless components, together with the gable roof, the varied openings had been created at totally different ranges to enhance the connection between flooring, improve the sense of spaciousness, and open the inside to the outside. The higher openings had been then lined with steel-reinforced vaulted buildings: one situated under the present roof ridge and the opposite above what would grow to be the lounge on the highest flooring.

A Home Seeking to a Cedrus Tree by Cedrus Studio, Vineh, Iran | Well-liked Alternative Winner, Structure +Brick, thirteenth Architizer A+Awards

Exploded axonometric: A Home Seeking to a Cedrus Tree by Cedrus Studio, Vineh, Iran | Well-liked Alternative Winner, Structure +Brick, thirteenth Architizer A+Awards

The vaulted components combine current and new building, whereas capitalizing on the aesthetic richness of brick building. To fulfill fashionable structural necessities, the brick vaults are steel-reinforced. This design honors the standard Persian craftsmanship of brickwork to create a wide range of varieties, starting from easy barrel vaults to diaphragm arches and domes.

These varieties, which spanned giant areas in properties and mosques, had been self-supporting and decorative on the identical time. The patterns, together with radial, herringbone, and corbelled, amongst others, had been tailored to the fabric’s limitations to create, nonetheless, spectacular areas.

Exploded axonometric: A Home Seeking to a Cedrus Tree by Cedrus Studio, Vineh, Iran | Well-liked Alternative Winner, Structure +Brick, thirteenth Architizer A+Awards

The pool’s form replicates the geometry of the home’s entrance elevation, resembling a mirrored image in water. The distinctive form can also be reiterated all through the home interiors at totally different scales, giving kind to architectural and inside design options such because the staircase void, the hearth, and the wall niches. This abstraction of the home’s entrance will be considered as a two-dimensional graphic component, just like a emblem, which provides the structure a singular id.

The undertaking’s achievement lies not in revival, however in translation. By treating Persian vaulting as a reside building system moderately than a historic reference, Cedrus Studio demonstrates how architectural data will be carried ahead by means of making.

Name for entries: The 14th Architizer A+Awards celebrates structure’s new period of craft. Apply for publication on-line and in print by submitting your tasks earlier than the Remaining Entry Deadline on January thirtieth!