The Doa Residential Building, designed by White Cube Atelier and completed in 2023, stands as a contemporary architectural response to urban density in Bazargan, Iran. The 900-square-meter residential project, led by architects Reza Asadzade and Shabnam Khalilpour, attempts to serve as a quiet pause in the fast-paced flow of the city, where urban congestion makes it difficult to breathe and borders dominate possession and appropriation.
The building's design philosophy centers on strategic volume manipulation, where every subtraction and addition responds to the need for natural light penetration and facilitates views that reach toward the horizon through carefully positioned glazing. Rather than moving volumes for mere aesthetic display, the architects based each decision on functional necessity, creating a building that prioritizes both practical needs and visual connection to the surrounding landscape.
One of the project's most notable strengths lies in its creation of diverse semi-open spaces that result from a domino effect of shifted volumes. This architectural approach provides residents with a flexible framework for different lifestyle choices, offering fresh, multi-layered experiences that vary depending on the time of day, season, and intended function. The shifting volumes serve not only as formal gestures but also as tools to define variations in light intensity, quality of vision, and boundaries of privacy.
The building's material palette features bright travertine stone that evokes a memory of whiteness, used not to conceal but to reveal lines of silence and shadow. Dark grooves on the building's facade, resembling hidden veins, create a peaceful contrast against the predominant whiteness. These design elements work together to establish visual harmony while maintaining the building's distinctive character within the urban context.
Balconies function as crucial threshold spaces between interior and exterior environments, serving as areas where wind, sound, and light pass through freely, allowing life to flow at the building's edges. Each retreat and projection in the building's form alters the angle and intensity of natural light, redefines airflow patterns, and modulates visual interactions between interior and exterior spaces, creating a dynamic relationship with the environment.
The Doa project is organized across five main levels, each serving as a natural continuation of the overall design concept while responding to residents' functional needs. The ground floor, dedicated to parking, provides direct connection to the vertical circulation core, including the main staircase and elevator system. From this central core, or via an external staircase, residents can access the first floor, where the kitchen and living room are positioned as the heart of the house.
The first and second floors maintain connectivity through an internal staircase, creating vertical spatial quality that enhances the sense of dynamism and continuity throughout the residence. The second floor embraces a central void and contains a bedroom, a cozy living room, and a large master bedroom that combines optimal light, views, and tranquility for residents.
Continuing upward via the main stairs and elevator, the third floor houses a two-bedroom apartment, offering functional diversity that allows for independence and flexibility in daily living arrangements. The building's highest level is dedicated to outdoor living and dining areas, featuring a small pool that completes the experience of stillness and relaxation at the building's peak.
More than a simple residential settlement, Doa represents a contemporary reinterpretation of fundamental concepts such as privacy, fenestration, and multi-layered spatial experience within the context of today's hectic and accelerated urban life. The project functions not as a static architectural object but as a dynamic experience where architecture and life intertwine through the careful balance of fullness and emptiness, shadow and light, privacy and openness. This approach demonstrates how contemporary residential architecture can respond thoughtfully to urban challenges while creating meaningful spaces for modern living.
