Exo-interior restaurant

Mazandaran Street, District 12, Tehran, Iran

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Exo-interior restaurant

Mazandaran Street, District 12, Tehran, Iran

Firm

Paadarchitects

Type

Hospitality + Sport › Restaurant

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2021

SIZE

0 sqft - 1000 sqft

BUDGET

Unknown

Photos

Parham Taghioff (12)

Contrary to the historical tendency, COVID-19 established a kind of inside-phobia that conceptualized the outer surer than the inner space (because of the airflow). Meanwhile, restaurants and cafés with courtyards and terraces achieved a significant competitive advantage. But can the Pandemic force generate new architectural types that create free-air qualities for those urban parts that are deprived of courtyard or terrace?
Facade-less restaurant has explored such an idea in the center of Tehran within a 85 square meter space. In this experiment, we conceptualized the space as a dead-end alley, one side of which is the transparent kitchen area and the other side is a place to eat on the periphery of the alley. This strategy allows us to create an inside zone with outside characters and move on to creating open-air space for a lot that did not have such a capability. The removal of formal furniture and the use of stone platforms in continuation with the flooring of this alley was another step in approaching this goal; the externalization of the internal space. But in the end, what about actual features of an outside space beyond a metaphor? We eliminated the door and the facade wall separating the store from the sidewalk, and the air of the city flows from Mazandaran Street into our new dead-end alley. To ensure the security of the restaurant during the closure, a roller door is applied, which is open and disappeared during the day.
The most problematic issue was solving comfort issues. In this, we also adopted outdoor conditioning strategies such as spray fans and infrared radiant heaters, and a small part of the air produced by the kitchen air-conditioner is blown into the alley to maintain positive pressure. In-restaurant activities such as cooking and serving food are supposed as live pictures broadcasting to the city, and a mirror placed at the end of the alley reflects images of the city to the depths of space. The facade-less restaurant tried to be a humble hypothesis for communication of architecture and city in limited block and to challenge the idea of the facade design as a fate for infill buildings.