Client: The municipality of Hamadan
Architent: NDA Studio
Architect in charge: Notash Dadjoo
Design Team: Notash Dadjoo, Mohammad Gerami, Naiem Nakhaie, Mehdi Khalafi
Site area: 44500
Project area: 11800
The municipality of Hamadan intended to build a cultural complex on a small hill with a special visibility to the city. Consideration of building as a new urban sign, site topography, climate of the region, city’s architectural heritage, night sight with lighting, a platform with a proper view to the city, visibility from urban area to the project and providing given mixed functions was the fundamental need in architectural design which have been declared by the client. According to these needs, three approaches were adopted in the design process: conceptual aspects, urbanization and cityscape; heritage, social and environmental design.
Birthing, flourishing and the paradox between roughness and elegance lie at the heart of this project’s design concept. In the process of giving birth, first thing that appears is the head, so by burring half of the building visually (with ramps along with site topography) and eventually (under ground floor) in a way that other half seems to head-out of ground. The green mountainous landscape of Hamadan contains the paradox of roughness of mountains and elegance of green landscape in one context which is appears in rough and heavy forms head-out of its green context. Rough and heavy forms of the complex that is flourished and embraced from inside through its infiltrated open spaces by a mass light weight structure.
The impact of urbanization and cityscape was in determination of site axes based on visibility, building height and its location on site. The site is situated among three main streets of Hamadan’s radial city plan. Two of them end up to and one is passing nearby site which one of them is a radial axis connecting the site to city center. Due to the importance level of city-to-site visibility from these streets, three axes get shaped on site and buildings have been aligned with them. Redefining the conventional urban sign and monument forms (a box on ground and a tower above) by using the hill height as visibility privilege and locate low-rise buildings on top, in harmony with surrounding low-rise buildings, is the cityscape aspects of design process.
Hamadan is one of the historical cities of Iran and located in mid-west of the country with cold climate and mountainous landscape which the Avicenna monument is the symbol of this city. The city’s introverted architecture synchronized with its climate conditions have been featured with centralized form, being buried part of the building in the ground, low height, few openings with small area in façades, canopy for sunlight control and the use of rough and dark material in façades which is used in design of this project. Inspired by Avicenna monument, a negative form was considered instead of the positive form of the tower like the conventional urban sign and monument in the design process of this complex. Buildings divided into three main functions and the central courtyard in the introverted architecture was considered as the entrance gateway for access point to these various functions (plaza, office, cultural and commercial buildings). The site was a gathering place for social events and interactions because it’s located in a residential zone. For maintaining and enhancement of this interactive platform, along with the allocation of semi-open space as a plaza, various elevation levels have been designed so it could draw these social interactions on the site to different levels of the complex. Because the site was a local park and act as ecological patch in urban green network, the design should be responsible for these aspects of the site. Greening the roofs and going into the ground was the design response to this aspects.
