A house in Yazd for an Architect

A house design in city of Yazd was a new challenge for our design team that was faced us with various problems such as hot and dry climate of Yazd, different client needs and project site (urban land subdivision) which has been enclosure from the three sides with other blocks. In addition, client was an architect who is graduated master of energy in architecture, so it makes us to have architectural dialogue with her to solve the problems. First of all, design team needed to pay attention to the client life style and find out how to approach with residence tendencies and attitudes. One of the main requirements of the client was protecting territories (private and public zones) and having large windows for connecting inside to the outside and also full sunlight spaces. However, based on land subdivision of municipality, project site could receive sunlight and view only form one side directly which is alongside the yard. Second, Yazd is a historical city in the center of Iran with a special architecture, but project site is located out of historical area which could be an opportunity for us to illustrate the continuity of concepts between outside and inside of the historical area. Therefore, design team decided to have a project with conceptual ideas from historical architecture for contemporary architecture of Yazd.
The design idea initiated with creating outdoor spaces to respond to the problems (life style, Sunlight, view and fresh air). From architect’s point of view, outdoor spaces are able to improve quality of indoor spaces, in other word; outdoor spaces could be made indoors to receive sunlight, picturesque view and natural air condition. So, design team decided to have private yards in the back of the project and public yard in the front based on protecting territories. Those yards connected each other with tow corridors for not being isolation of private yards in the back. Then, outdoor spaces distributed from latest level to upper levels with different spatial characters, for instance back yard which is proximate with the guest suit, its name is Mehman khaneh yard which means a place for guests in Iranian culture. All of the outdoor spaces have similar spatial strategy to Mehman khaneh yard. In additions, to absorb earth moisture and cool first floor brought down in the earth and forms make airflow and natural air condition in upper levels. Natural airflow and increasing moisture are key elements to natural ventilation that to be used in the project. Hence, creating forms, corridors and half floors help to make airflow naturally that putting small pool on the air route could be blowing cool and moisture air to interior spaces.
In traditional houses of Yazd spatial organization has significant role and the combination of open, closed and covered spaces has had obvious response to the different aspect of life of residence such as life style, culture, climate, nature and etc. So with scanning traditional houses in Yazd can find out relations between open, closed and covered spaces, those relations are main source of inspiration of ideas in the project. Generally a house for an architect is combination of open, closed and covered spaces.

Author Architects: Amirabbas Aboutalebi, Saeed Partovi
Social & Strategic Designer/Advisor: Mohammadreza Haeri Mazandarani
Client: Badrieh Dehghan
Design team: Adel Afshar Manesh, Mehrzad Esmaeili Charkhab, Ali Bidram, Sajad Poorhoseini
Energy Analaysis: Badrieh Dehghan, Ehsan Fatemi,