„I believe in creating new concepts and meanings.“

You will be on the ADC congress stage in May – the motto of this year’s ADC Festival is „Superpower Creativity“. What is your superpower?

One of the challenges I always face with myself is discovering my true self. In one’s life, getting to know the weaknesses and the strengths, the superpower and, more probable, the super weakness is the most important achievement. Especially to know the weaknesses helps a lot. It helps us to dance on our strong leg instead of relying on a broken or weak leg.

Reinhold Messner, the Italian mountaineer once said: to reach the top you should consider the weakest member of your team and not the strongest. So, your superpower is inherent in knowing about your super weaknesses.

We are very much looking forward to your talk. What will it be about?  

I am glad to be a part of this program and I really appreciate its goals. Your target to motivate the younger generation to be courageous, move forward, confront fears, allow a discourse, look into the future, be open to the uncomfortable, as you mentioned in the program brief, is really valuable. Of course, I do not have a solution or formula to achieve these goals, I think there are no such formulas. I will, however, share a few personal experiences with you. I live and work in a specific geographical, cultural, historical and social context that doesn’t make things easy for a woman architect. On the other hand, my country is struggling for survival under severe economic sanctions, while seized by a difficult internal political situation. Thus, my view on creativity is based on experiences that are pretty different from those of an architect living in a Western country.

I am going to talk about a creativity which not only tries to find its way through those limitations, but also is obliged to find its power from the same specific condition and context. It’s a common ground that gives meaning to the work of Iranian Artists, filmmakers and architects. You see, Nasa’s Mars Exploration Program has published a number of pictures taken from the soil of Mars, that many people of Earth looked at with immense interest. However, similar pictures taken from the soil of Hyde Park, would not draw the attention of anybody. What I mean is that context, if grasped correctly, can make the experiences of life interesting and sometimes unique. Any architectural project is based on many routines and common issues; an architect should explore the potentials of the site to transform what is ordinary to extraordinary.

You just started a new initiative called „post pandemic architecture“, What are you aiming for?

The pandemic has drawn our attention to the dimensions of human needs. The minimum space requirements suggested in the canonical handbooks cannot be considered standard anymore.  Standards were created to accommodate a human’s physical activities, but today they fail to satisfy the human needs. Instead of considering the physical dimensions of the human body as presented by Le Corbusier in „Modulor“, today the volume of the air in a room, safe social distances, avoiding infections, etc. must be considered.

We need to address the roots and return to the origins of things and try to re-define them.

Although the pandemic situation is not permanent, it can permanently change our vision for the built environment. At the same time, the possibility of another pandemic in future is always present. That’s why we must be prepared!

The call for ideas under the title „post pandemic architecture“ invites architects to enter a dialogue and a brainstorming about the arguments for minimizing the negative effects of a possible new pandemic in the future.

What were your most outstanding projects from your point of view?

When I finish a project I immediately think about the next and this pushes me towards the future, So I guess I haven’t done my most outstanding project yet. These projects are steps towards a perfect project that will never come. 

How do you start a new project? What are your first steps? What is important to you when starting a new project?

I like to start from flying very high, thinking of the impossible, to allow the most surreal imaginations, and to conceive the most unconventional solutions. Then comes the moment to think of how the design can land on earth. It is the time to make possible what seemed to be impossible; in another word, to make real what was surreal in the beginning. If I start from anything possible, down on earth and cliché, then I’ll be trapped in the limitations, I can’t cross any border and there will be no fresh achievement.

I begin with the subject, site and the project conditions: context, time, program, sociocultural issues, budget, available materials and techniques, etc.  The architectural solution lies in the project conditions and restrictions. Every new project, from the very beginning, hides its basic Ideas. The project itself suggests what to do and what not to do. The role of architects is to think of priorities and to understand which aspect of the project can inspire the main architectural solutions: the idea that can respond to all the issues in a unique and clever way. A creative reaction to the problems outlines the architectural ideas. In each project, before the form, I look for a virtue which can fit the program. The form comes as a solution that allows me to achieve that virtue. It Is essential to decide what should be highlighted in one specific project.

I believe in creating new concepts and meanings. We need to address the roots and return to the origins of things and try to re-define them. As Philippe Starck says: to design a new faucet you should think about the water that constitutes a human need and not the faucet itself.

From your point of view as an architect: How do we want to live together after the pandemic while respecting the planet and protecting our environment?

To our surprise, some scientists say that humans are the only animals that their extinction will help the planet to flourish, while their survival is damaging in an unreversible way the nature. So paradoxically, if we really want to help the environment, we should do nothing to prevent the pandemics.