Seen from above, the small-scale domes are a brighter echo of the colorful earthen hues naturally occurring in the landscape, referencing the topography of the island while simultaneously creating a brightly colored contrast to the earth from which they are made. ZAV architects are among other brilliant firms whose architecture is aimed at community empowerment through local development. Indeed, the scale of the domes is commensurate with the capabilities of local craftsmen who are previously trained on smaller projects, becoming master SuperAdobe masons before constructing the touristic dwellings. Indeed, the architects’ shift to rammed earth techniques was a material choice that allowed them to redistribute a larger portion of their budget to labor costs (as opposed to importing expensive material), also empowering the local workforce by offering training for construction skills. To be clear, while the project offers an economic building solution that benefits the client, the premise of the design is not to exploit cheap local labor rather, it is directly aimed at the economic distress caused by sanctions. This meant that the architects’ vision of a settlement of small scale of the domes could be realized according to the building capabilities of local craftsmen and unskilled workers. In Presence at Hormuz 02, the bags are filled with the dredging sand around nearby docks. They are then layered to form a compression structure. The building process involves filling large fabric bags, often tubular in shape, with slightly damp earth and other organic materials like straw.
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With the goal of building trust rather than simply building architecture, the scheme was developed based on the SuperAdobe technique, developed in California by the Iranian-born architect Nader Khalili (originally designed for NASA, who was experimenting with how to create human settlements in space).
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Instead, the colorful rammed earth domes seek to empower the island’s local community. How so?įor starters, by thinking beyond the traditional goals of the discipline (aesthetics, program, budget according to established prices) and, in the words of ZAV architects, “create a bigger economic cake by tying together the benefit of the stakeholders to that of the larger society.” In the case of Hormuz, the studio thought critically about how contemporary architecture often relies on and therefore bolsters, “imported intellectual or material products.” Rather than a passive object that responds to existing political structure and building industry, which often set the limits for architectural design, architects have the potential to redefine (or redesign) the entire process. Yet, construction is undeniably central to architecture’s economic and social agency.
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When assessing architecture, the industry as a whole (architects, critics and clients alike) are wont to leap from design to finished product, usually overlooking the critical evaluation of the design’s relationship to the building process.
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Their commitment to reconfiguring architecture’s internal mechanisms in order to effect external social change is fully realized in their A+Award-winning project, Presence in Hormuz 02, which took home the Jury Prize in Architecture +Color category. Zav Architects is well aware of this potential and has innovatively reshaped the layout of their studio in order to tap into this potential. Architects are well aware of the aesthetic and social dimensions of their trade but what about other sectors, such as industry, state and enterprise? As a mediator between a large variety of stakeholders, architecture has latent agency to remake relations between these groups, as opposed to simply replicating them.
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Modern life has shattered expertise into distinct disciplines, making interdisciplinarity appear more an exception than a rule yet, cross-fertilization is the surest way to yield innovation. This contention is directly tied to more basic questions that have long stood at the heart of the discipline: “What are the limits of architecture and how can it suggest a political alternative for communal life? How can it attain social agency?” “In a country where the state struggles with political disputes outside its borders, every architectural project becomes a proposal for internal governing alternatives,” says the Tehran-based studio, ZAV Architects. Should your firm be considered among the world’s best architecture firms? Find out more about Architizer’s 10th Annual A+Awards program, opening this fall: Sign up to receive key program updates and deadline reminders.