Kohan Ceram Central Office Building

by Hooba Design Group

Client Kohan Ceram
Awards RIBA International Awards for Excellence 2021

This project won RIBA Emerging Architect 2021

The RIBA International Emerging Architect is presented to Hooba Design Group of Tehran. In making the award the judges were impressed by how the practice’s Kohan Ceram Central Office Building successfully addresses a number of key criteria and responds with an architecture of restraint, invention and elegance.

Working with an existing structure and collaborating with the client to develop a double layered ‘Spectacled Brick’ environmental performance has been achieved whilst creating a beautiful building which stands out like a glowing beacon on a grey city corner.

Commissioned by Kohan Ceram Brick Manufacturing Company to design their headquarters in Tehran the site is situated alongside the Sattari expressway and forms the western boundary of a residential neighbourhood. The project brief required the existing structure to be adapted to accommodate a mix of uses – showroom, sales office, administration, car park and also a residential unit – but the organisation of spaces and voids provides for flexibility of uses in the longer term.

The decision to use a single material to create both the whole and all the parts with the external and internal structure made of the Spectacled Bricks results in an intriguing ambiguity about what is solid and what is void. The double skin of perforated bricks is either infilled to make solid, or filled to insulate, or inserted with cylindrical glass blocks for diffused light; the shutters to the clear windows adopt the same module. The resulting building is homogeneous and minimal in terms of form and creates different perceptions during day and night. In some parts of the building, the façade has been extended to the interior spaces, forming deep voids inside the spaces to bring in natural light and ventilation. Planting fills a gap created behind the façade. The air entering these voids gets filtered by the vegetation in the flower boxes along the void length to become fresh and cleaner, in the dry and polluted climate of Tehran.

The organisation of spaces and voids in a naturally ventilated environment with controlled but generous daylight makes this an uplifting and aspiring design to enjoy and use.

With this project and their collaborative approach to innovation Hooba Design Group is a worthy recipient of the RIBA International Emerging Architect.

Date of completion July 2019
Location Tehran, Iran
Cost Confidential
Internal area 1,019 m²

Lighting Design FADco