MAAN 住宅丨Baan Architects

Firm： Baan Architects

Type： Residential › Apartment

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2020

SIZE： 10,000 sqft - 25,000 sqft

BUDGET： $100K - 500K

“MAAN’” residential is built on a land of 8.3 * 22.5 meters with a total area of 1000 square meters. The studio has endeavored to negotiate around challenging problems with the client between “what is approved by architecture marketing, project costs, construction issues” and “something more than the mere building itself.”

From the beginning of the project, some challenges were raised:

1- Building character due to the client’s first experience had significant importance to his Branding.

2- Common concerns towards the market and public demands.

3- solving functional programming the challenge between client requests and building regulations, such as accommodating three bedrooms in 8 meters width according to the possibility of receiving direct light from one side only.

Problem

In the argument of building against architecture, Mashhad mostly consisted of buildings. This issue has caused many spatial patterns to seem disordered and rough, and most facades have been reduced to a decorative shell as a union surface that connects mass with the city.

Therefore, the design team decided to define the project problem by creating a prototype that was premier as a legible and expressive project that could describe an independent and yet involved relationship with the investment market, rigid building regulations, construction, public culture, and the demands in the city.

Strategy

In urban land uses, the “corners” activate the side surfaces next to the façade surface, providing more capacities for responding to the project issues in the design process. Thus, the strategy of the project was defined as "engaging five surfaces of a building into one activated unity against one mere façade." in Which, by compressing the spaces on the edges between mass and the city, showing the components, and emphasizing them, an effort was made to:

1- The project is characterized as an independent building that is infilled in an urban block.

2- This strategy provided the opportunity to move away from the "decorative shell" and focus the project on the "envelope".

Technique

In line with the problem and strategies of the project, several options were tested in the Form Structure, program, and circulation structure of the building. In the end, the four techniques of "aggregate", "part/whole", "activating subsurface and side-views", and "marking familiar materials" were used in the project.