Lanak Villa

Location: Borujerd, Lorestan, Iran

Client: Private

Material: Concrete

Design date: 2021

Site area: 690m²

Built area: 200m²

Architect: Meysam Feizi

Story:

Text provided by the architects:

How can architecture provide a here- and now-based solution to problem situation based on its lived experience ?

Lanak is the product of a dialogue between a disciplinary view and the dual identity of the employer, an identity with a half resulting from the lived experience in a quite traditional and religious context of the village and the other half coming from a modern and rationalist context in the capital. The employer’s wish was to design an expressive building in his birthplace; a building that allows him to accompany and simultaneously express both layers of his identity. To put it more accurately, on the one hand, he asked for a modern building with maximum connection with the outside, and on the other hand, he had a tendency to a traditional building where his privacy and private living would be consistent with his childhood lived experience.

As we believe, architecture showcases itself not only in form and spatial organization but also in the material, thickness, and how to relate to the earth. Some signs of indigenous architecture in places far from cities, such as the project site at a few kilometers from Boroujerd, with the same structural constraint that has turned into a project for Iran's past architects, and its aesthetic and viability capacities have been derived over time, can be still found as a kind of local tradition in rural buildings Thus, given the family profession of the employer, (mason and form-worker) and the availability and the cost-effectiveness of the soil, which runs the economic cycle of successive generations of local artisans, it seems we require to use this material with the modern technology of the “molded rammed earth” and the thick construction method of the building buried in the sloping ground of the hill. Also, by thickening the walls buried in the ground, besides enhancing the thermal capacity of piers and creating an interior tailored to the private life, the structure would not be a separate element as in the past architectural tradition.

The special and eye-catching microclimate of the region is harsh and cold in one half of the year and mild and temperate in the other half. Such duality, on the one hand, brings to the mind the need to create a kind of shield against the violence of nature, and on the other hand, requires the use of the view, landscape, and the pristine nature of the region. The outcome of integrating and combining the traditional method of thickness and modern transparency in the Lanak concept leads to organizing the space and various spatial qualities, which allows us to define various and flexible events and functions in the indoor and outdoor space in addition to providing diverse natural light and the possibility of experiencing the outside space from the inside. Hence, a different experience of life with spatial and biological experiences quite different from urban apartments will be provided for residents in the second house in the suburbs.

Shortlisted for the Villa Magazine Award 2021 - with participant code VA-0443