This apartment complex is located in the city of Ramsar where the low distance between the Caspian Sea to the north, and the Alborz forest mountains to the south has created a pleasant natural environment and beauty. The principal goals of the project were to make good use of the environmental assets by respecting the context and limiting environmental harm, enhancing human comfort by providing favorable natural light and view, and an integral hierarchy of privacy.
Project Name: Green Yards Apartment
Architecture Firm: YEKBON STUDIO
Website: www.yekbon.com
Firm Location: Tehran, Iran
Gross Built Area: 5,850 square meters
Project location: Ramsar, Iran
Lead Architects: Mora Manzouri
Additional Credits
Design Team:Parisa Mirsadeghi, Faezeh Khodakhah
Clients: Mr. Honarbakhsh
Landscape: Mora Manzouri
Visualization : Masoumeh Rahimi, Azin Rezaee, Mohamad Mousavi
This building takes a new approach in designing today apartments to enhance the quality of living space for its residents. In this project, the improved quality of living space is provided by making a better connection with nature, creating environmental comfort, and respecting the hierarchy of privacy.
The dissociation between the modern man and nature has not only led to the degradation of nature but has also decreased the quality of humans’ living environment. The principal goal of this project is to enhance the relationship between humans and nature, and to limit damage to environment as much as possible. This apartment building is in the city of Ramsar, where the short distance between the Sea to the north and Forest Mountains to the south has created a pleasant natural beauty and emphasizes the importance of incorporating the environmental elements in the design of the building.
In this project, instead of designing separately detached villas, a compact apartment has been designed which still provides the qualities and benefits of a detached villa for each unit. This results in the reduction of the project’s footprint significantly, while maintaining the attractions for its residents. To enhance the quality of the living space for the residents, the unique design opens up the surface of the building so that it has more interaction with the surrounding nature and allows the sun light and the sea breeze penetrate the building, as opposed to designing a monolithic and massive Building.
climatic features play important role in this project, which help to reduce the amount of energy use without sacrificing environmental comfort. In the existing urban texture of the area, the buildings are constructed separately and scattered due to the abundance and accessibility of water and to use the natural ventilation as much as possible. Although this approach increases the natural ventilation in the area, scattered buildings lead to an increased destruction of the environment and the natural resources. Thus, in this project it has been tried not only to design a compact and unified apartment building, but to also create the opportunity to get the best out of the natural ventilation and the sea breeze. Therefore, creating voids on the façade of the building and designing linear floor plans enhances the natural ventilation for each residential unit.
Since well-organized hierarchy of physical structures strengthens the social interactions, in this project, public, semi-public, semi-private and private spaces are designed to provide the hierarchy of privacy. Availability of open and covered semi-public spaces in the building increases the possibility of social interactions and consequently the liveliness of the complex.
Moreover, dooryards and private balconies are designed for each unit to play the role of a house yard, an essential element of Iranian houses and one of the superiorities of a house over an apartment. The concept is to Maximize the possible use of “Productive Capacities of Nature” and limit damage to environment. Each unit has its own resources and agriculture zone which is depicted as a natural cycle.
