The Majara Complex on Iran's Hormuz Island represents a groundbreaking evolution of Super-Adobe construction from emergency disaster relief shelters to permanent, large-scale architectural infrastructure. This innovative project by ZAV Architects has transformed a construction technique originally designed for NASA's Mars colonization program into a comprehensive tourism complex that directly benefits the local community, earning recognition as one of the recipients of the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2025.
Hormuz Island, strategically positioned in the Persian Gulf, has long served as a significant port characterized by its distinctive colorful mountain landscapes. Despite its natural tourist appeal, the island's residents have historically faced severe economic hardship and limited opportunities. The Majara Complex was conceived as more than just a building project – it represents a deliberate architectural intervention designed to transfer control, create opportunities, and generate economic benefits directly for the local population.
The foundation of this transformative approach lies in the adoption of Super-Adobe construction technique, pioneered by Iranian-American architect Nader Khalili. This innovative method was originally developed in response to NASA's call for low-cost, self-sufficient human settlements on the Moon and Mars, relying entirely on materials available on-site. The technique involves filling long polypropylene bags with moistened earth and arranging them in sequential layers, with strands of barbed wire placed between courses to provide essential tensile strength and prevent structural slippage.
The Super-Adobe system is architecturally limited to arches and domes, as these curved forms allow the earth-filled bags to handle structural loads through compression. Since earth materials demonstrate exceptional strength when compressed, the dome shape proves ideal as it distributes weight evenly down the curve, providing superior structural stability and enhanced seismic resistance. In terms of scale, the technique can reliably construct a single, stable dome structure up to 22 feet (6.7 meters) in diameter, with larger spaces achieved through clustering multiple domes or utilizing barrel vault configurations.
This construction simplicity yields significant social benefits for Hormuz Island's community. Since the building process requires no specialized skilled labor, ZAV Architects provided comprehensive training programs that transformed local, unskilled workers into trained Super-Adobe masons. This educational component meant the construction process itself became a community investment, providing residents with transferable construction skills for future projects and employment opportunities.
The primary building material consists of sand excavated from the nearby Hormuz dock, effectively transforming what was previously considered a waste by-product into the core structural component of the entire project. This strategic reliance on readily available, on-site materials significantly reduced both construction costs and transportation expenses, making the project economically viable while supporting local resource utilization.
The Majara Complex represents a dramatic scaling of Super-Adobe methodology, translating a system typically employed for small-scale emergency shelters into a permanent, multipurpose tourist destination. The expansive complex spans 10,300 square meters and comprises approximately 200 varying-sized domes clustered organically across the natural landscape. The facility features tourist accommodation and artist residency spaces alongside facilities exclusively designed for community use, including a public library, craft studios, oral history documentation spaces, a worship area, and a recycling center.
A particularly innovative component of the program is the Typeless (Badban) Community Space, a distinct non-dome structure serving as the complex's management and educational center. This facility controls visitor flow and hosts community workshops specifically designed to protect the local population from potential negative social effects of rapid tourism development. The space utilizes a flexible, low-cost concrete and scaffolding system, allowing the structure to be easily adapted for changing community needs, which explains the architects' designation as "Typeless." It essentially functions as the project's adaptive control hub for managing the tourism economy.
The dome form proves culturally and visually familiar to the region, echoing traditional vernacular Iranian water-storage structures and architectural heritage. This cultural familiarity ensures the new architecture is readily accepted and integrated into the local community's daily life. From a thermodynamic perspective, in the Persian Gulf's extreme climate conditions, the earth-filled dome structures function as highly effective passive climate regulation systems.
The Super-Adobe construction demonstrates exceptional thermal mass properties, which significantly slow heat transfer and allow the massive earthen walls to absorb the day's intense heat and release it gradually during cooler nighttime hours. This simple, non-mechanical climate control strategy proves essential for occupant comfort while maintaining low operational costs without requiring expensive air conditioning systems.
The architectural design ensures substantial economic benefits by strategically channeling tourism revenue directly back into the local community. The clustered arrangement of tourist accommodations and local service facilities forces visitors to spend money directly at community-operated businesses, including on-site craft studios, restaurants, and cultural facilities. This intentional architectural placement prevents tourist revenue from leaving the island and instead channels it immediately to residents who operate these businesses, creating sustainable employment and circulating money within this innovative community-based economic model.
The Majara Complex stands as a powerful architectural statement on the transformative role of architecture in social and economic development. ZAV Architects accomplished far more than constructing a series of buildings – they deployed a specific, low-cost, and resilient strategy to channel capital investment into human resource development, transfer critical construction skills to local workers, and create a scalable, structurally safe, and climatically appropriate project that functions as an economic generator for the entire community.
This groundbreaking project demonstrates the remarkable potential of Super-Adobe construction to evolve from its origins as a disaster relief solution into a comprehensive model for responsible, community-centered urban development. The success of the Majara Complex provides a replicable framework for other communities facing similar economic challenges, showing how innovative construction techniques can be leveraged to create sustainable tourism infrastructure that prioritizes local benefit over external profit extraction.
