Iranian Land’ Rest and Service Area | Candidate project in 2A magazine 2018 | Medium scale category | IAAC 

’Iranian Land’ Rest and Service Area is located along the way between Tehran-Saveh highway, inside the Zarandieh Special Economical Zone. The project, on the one hand, is in a continuous dialogue with the passengers driving fast on the highway, and on the other hand, with the ‘Iranian Land’ recreational, housing and commercial complex which is still being developed. The site is extended along the highway with a length of about 600 and a width of 70 meters, half of which is located within the bounds of the high-tension power tower. Therefore, the question arises as to how the language of the project would be capable of organizing an extended site by creating integrity, while at the same time it needs to have a dual relationship with the highway for one thing (As some passengers will have a very short stop and go), and the ‘Iranian Land’ complex for another.
By reviewing different scenarios, we divided the program of the project into two major parts of :

1. commercial-recreational and 2. residential, which differ from one another in terms of their relationship between inside and outside. The commercial-recreational part is in a continuous relationship and dialogue with the highway, leads to the formation of an integrated and continuous space, and the residential part of the project is the moment of repose in this dialogue with the highway, having the potentials to hold a half-day or several-day sojourn and requires peaceful space. The structure in this project is defined this way: the thick and monumental shear walls of the commercial-recreational section, uphold the burdensome slab of the residential area. The three- dimensional structural slab which is built between the residential area (on the top) and the commercial-recreational section (downside) with the height of three meters, on the one hand, contributes to the stability of the slab, and on the other hand, acts as the passage-way of mechanical and electrical installations of the project.

We designed a wall to define the relationship between inside and outside and heightens that sense of passage. The wall disconnects, but at the same time organizes and groups the two major parts of the program and functional spaces. The wall segregates the residential areas –and the public plaza and terraces that have their faces right towards the ‘Iranian Land’ complex- from the highway, and joins the pathways and ramps convergently at a certain point so as to restrict passage to the bounds of the high-tension power tower. It also defines the project alongside the site and highway in a way that the entire site would be integrated. The wall which acts as the elevated icon of the project is built high from one side, and meeting other borderlines convergently at one point (the opening to the bounds of high-tension power tower) on the other side, it finally reaches the human scale. The space below the power tower is an area for the purpose of passing through several gardens.