Imagine a house with the ability to rotate the rooms with just a push of a button!
[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text css_animation=”top-to-bottom”]Welcome to the transforming Sharifi – ha House. The townhouse, based in Tehran, Iran, is created by a studio called Next Office. Basically the façade has been replaced by an adaptable, modular living space. Three rotating boxes turn 90 degrees and transform the interior to an exterior space.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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The house has two basement floors that provide fitness facilities and wellness areas. The ground floor consists of parking space and quarters for the housekeeper. The first and second floors are designed as family space and include the kitchen, lounge room, TV room and a piano area. Remaining floors offer bedrooms, bathrooms and additional kitchen and lounge areas. The first box forms a breakfast room, the second a guest room and the third an office.
Now to the most interesting part about the project: Temperatures in Iran can rise above 40 degrees Celsius or below freezing. Traditional Iranian houses have an airy living room for summer and a separate living room for winter months. The studio solves this issue by creating rotating rooms for different weather conditions: When the weather is cold the rooms remain in closed position. As soon as the sun shines the boxes can be rotated up to 90 degrees towards the outside. “I think privacy is a very important thing for Iranian people. The question is how much freedom, how much openness with others, how much we can connect with the city?” says the architect in an interview.
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A big downside for me is the central void in the project. When the boxes are closed, the building should capture sunlight throughout the space of the central void. Studying architecture my professors always told me that solving lighting through a central void is one of the easiest but not best solutions. The void causes main problems as bad lighting and temperature increase within the building. If we consider that this house is in Iran, a country known for its hot weather, a temperature increasing building is not really efficient.
One aspect which interests me the most is how the rooms can rotate. It is actually not as complicated as I thought. If you have been to a car show then you probably have seen the platforms rotate so you can see the cars from every angle. These platforms are similar to the platforms that rotate these wooden boxes. However, the costs of these platforms are extremely high.
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“In all of our projects we want to do something radical something that has a great and powerful concept” explained Taghaboni, the architect of Sharifi – ha House. The studio achieved their goal in doing something powerful. The idea behind it is great, but I personally think that the studio could have had a better solution in regards to lighting.
