ARCHITECTURAL FOCUS
Artiman is not a restoration of the abandoned building’ s former image. It is a comprehensive reworking of what was already there.
This transformation also provided an opportunity to revisit Tehran’ s diminishing tradition of terrace apartments. Once a defining feature of some of the city’ s most notable residential developments, generous terraces have gradually been replaced by narrow balconies as land values and development density have increased.
At Artiman, continuous terraces extend around the building as inhabitable thresholds between the apartments and the city. Combined with courtyards introduced around the perimeter and across different levels, they bring daylight, cross-ventilation, planting, and wide urban views into everyday life. Landscape is no longer confined to the ground; it rises through the building and becomes part of the residential experience.
The same attention was given to the communal areas. Enlarged and diversified shared spaces turn circulation into more than a functional necessity, providing settings for informal encounters while maintaining clear degrees of privacy. The result balances the independence of each home with a broader sense of collective inhabitation.
Behind this spatial reorganisation was a demanding structural operation. Three heavy concrete floors were dismantled and replaced by six lightweight steelframed levels with more generous ceiling heights, increasing the building from fifteen to eighteen
storeys. The existing concrete core was reinforced to connect the original and new structural systems. Advanced nonlinear analysis and a closely controlled construction sequence were used to verify the performance of the combined structure throughout the intervention.
Artiman is not a restoration of the abandoned building’ s former image. It is a comprehensive reworking of what was already there. Architecture, structure, and landscape operate together to convert an unfinished frame into a contemporary residential environment, demonstrating how Tehran’ s dormant buildings can become resources for the city rather than candidates for demolition.
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