The Tetra Food Hall project is a 3-story building with an area of 600 square meters, located in the busy Kian Abad street of Ahvaz, and includes uses such as a coffee shop, restaurant, and bakery. Before the renovation, this building had a stone appearance with two-dimensional graphics and no architectural values, and it was surrounded by tall office buildings covered with bricks. The client’s request from the project design team was to design a building that, in addition to creating harmony with the region, would display a progressive and innovative approach through criticizing the existing situation.
With this description, the main question of the design team was how the project can create a distinction in the typology structure and morphology of the urban platform while establishing a dialogue with its nearby neighborhoods and creating visual continuity in the urban shell and inviting passers-by to its inner space?
Therefore, in the first step, the face without the previous identity was destroyed and by keeping its concrete structure exposed, a neutral grid was provided to define the new shell. Considering the need to connect two adjacent brick bodies through this project, the selected material for the wall of this building was brick with the average color of the sides. Also, in addition to extending the view of the neighborhoods, in order to create a connection between the interior and exterior space and to define the invitation, the brick shells were bent inward by creating a curve. In such a way that in each of the cells defined by the concrete structure, a brick arch with a certain radius was placed and according to the specific use, it took a different direction. Sometimes to define the entrance, it guides the passerby inside, sometimes it hugs the cafe’s seats from inside, and sometimes it emphasizes the side walls with a linear extension to the inside. It is as if the urban shell penetrates to the innermost layer of the project and defines the inner spaces.
Due to the exposure of the project audience to this shell, it was tried to make the brick modules have a unique nature to encourage the sense of touch and play with light and shadow. Therefore, by axing them by the manual labor of the workers, we tried so that each one, instead of having a regular texture of a factory, is like a work of art resulting from the efforts of handwork, and no brick is similar to another. This decision added a new perceptual layer to the project, which can only be seen at high resolution and at close range.
This decision added a new perceptual layer to the project, which can only be seen at high resolution and at close range. Also, the use of concrete materials, black metal sheet and natural wood in furniture and decorative elements create a texture and a kind of composition consistent with brick.
This project includes two floors of closed space, one floor of semi-open terrace and at the end a green roof, which, while being integrated in the logic of their formation, offers different spatial experiences to its audience. The Tetra Foodhall project is a display of dancing brick arches, each one trying to extend the city inward, harmonizing with the music of the city.