Approximation House

The small house is located in the west side of Tehran on a narrow plot (w=8.5) and is confined on two sides by the other houses. A small setback from the street, provides just enough space for a small front yard. The term approximation stands for the approach of humanizing the entire process of creation, from drawing to execution, by valorizing the defects versus perfectness of works entrusted to machines.

In the “Approximation House”, the craftsmen can express themselves through personalizing their way of shaping thousands of pieces of wood, that are going to be the main material for the façade. Here façade is much more than a decorated screen; it is a penetrable green micro ecosystem, which connects the small yard to the roof and extends on both sides . The house consists of two duplex apartments in which will reside a father with his daughter. There will be also an apartment dedicated to guesthouse.

Although the apartments are rather small, the interior has all the qualities of a three dimensional space: it is articulated in section and can be discovered from several points of view in the space. The skylights, introduce the natural light and the sky scene into the house.

The function of tridimensional wooden texture is to mitigate the strong sunlight of Tehran and to create a play of light and shadow in interior space. It provides also privacy for the building’s inhabitants. This intricate structure consists of thousands of small wooden round section battens, which will be individually formed and shaped by the workers within a defined freedom. At the end every piece of wood becomes a unique handmade statue and when installed on the façade the result will be an art work belonging to all the people participating in the construction team work.

Persian gardens are well known around the word. The term Paradise comes from, ancient Persian “Pairi Deza”, which means surrounded by walls. In addition to plants and flowers, birds have been an inseparable part of the gardens. Iranian poets have provided infinite poetic descriptions of the birds and flowers. Iranian traditional chant is based on imitating the song of nightingale. During its growth, the city has swallowed most of the existing gardens and woods. The 180 different species of bird, except a few, could not adapt themselves to the new artificial habitat. In addition to dense vegetation, the house of approximation is aimed to house many homeless little birds.