Four Seasons Villa
Location: Chaboksar, Gilan province, Iran
Architect: Shahin Heidari
Client: Private
Material: wood & Glass
Design date: 2011
Site area: 1000m2
Studio: New Wave Architecture
Principal Architect: Lida Almasian, Shahin Heidari
Design Team: Maryam Amanpour, Pegah Roushan, Soroush Majidi
Story:
Text provided by the architects:
Project Context
Chaboksar-Guilan province-Iran
In Iran, being situated in a territory on the southern coast of the Caspian sea -a town called Chaboksar- 216 meters above sea level, provides a calm and green area for housing a nuclear family. A dwelling space wherein tries to frame surrounding environment neatly and communicate eloquently.
Climate
This area enjoys a climate known for its moderate, mild, and Mediterranean-like. The Alborz range provides further diversity to the land and the Caspian coasts, causing heavy annual rainfall and temperate climate. However, freezing temperature is seldom reported in coastal areas.
Challenges and Responses/philosophy
Recently, the spatial diagrams of sustainable houses have likely resembled, and parameters like solar panels, isolated walls, double glasses, etc., are common. Most of them incline to appear as an airship. Moreover, the Glasshouses of the twentieth century, such as Phillip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe s" attempted to dissolve visual boundaries between inside and out. However, sometimes functions were mixed, and privacy and aesthetics aspects were more likely to be ignored. Meanwhile, recent architectural debates tend to eliminate the concept of "dwelling" defined as a machine by challenging constructing a sustainable house that interacts with its environment, exchanges energy, and functions as a self-sufficient entity. At the same time, human presence, aesthetics values, and various experiences in the architecture atmosphere through time are indispensable parts of the architecture. Hence there is no mask between inside and outside.
Guilan architectural heritage experienced extroverted architecture while nature embraces the architecture and rural dwellers tend to welcome surrounding green areas warmly.
Architecture and Design
Four seasons house creates a legible interactive conversation of dwelling and environmental veils: Spring, summer, autumn, and winter. It soberly wears what nature wears throughout the time. The building extends along the east-west concerning climatic conditions. "Play" of the volumes in the main wood cubic shell generates variation in a spatial organization while maintaining the privacy and independence of dwellers and concentrates on the sociality of human beings by placing family activities and services areas in the centric cube. Hence the main cubic shell with its openings reunions separate functions in a subtly box-like enclosure and forms social life to approach a unity form. Moreover, it induces shadows, breezy and cool spaces regarding wind direction due to air circulation, diminishing the sunlight radiation and decreasing air humidity during hot summers. Creating a terrace on top of the roof represents an alcove – Shahneshin- which comes from an architectural background in southern parts of the Caspian Sea in Iran.
The ground floor level functions as the public zone; the upper levels are private areas. Big windows facilitate excellent indoor illumination and contribute to the landscape, and dwellers experience the spirit of seasons in nature. In fact, the project is being re-created frequently in 24-hours time. Windows portray the surrounding environment and reflect it during the days, whereas at nights, they represent landscape and frame it. As a result, immediacy and sustained observation are provided in the combination of purity and simplicity of cubic structure and mutual communication.
The program calls for two single bedrooms and a master bedroom, an adequate kitchen, dining area, living room, a small gym, and a swimming pool in an 800 sq meters area.
Sustainability
The project aims to create a housing area in the site as a part of nature to generate the needed energy resources to live within today's quality standards. Solar panels are favorably angled to receive a substantial amount of light, providing a percentage energy requirement of the building. The Rainwater is re-collected, stored in a tank, filtered, and distributed to the lower parts of the house for drinking, lavation, etc. In addition, the heating system is provided by solar panels placed on top of the roof.
Materials
Applying Glass and recycled wood, which is retrieved by (CHOKA) factory –wood and paper factory of Iran - in the near distance of Chaboksar, is an attempt to achieve nature conservation.
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