Tweak[ed] is a renovation project of a 154 sqm unit located on the 5th floor of a residential building in Saadat Abad, Tehran, Iran.
The 2-bedroom apartment is transformed into a new configured space through the tweaking of its walls, floors and ceiling. Re-organization of spatial order is achieved through the re-arranging of the sequence of spatial experiences. Materials have been tweaked and selected to reflect the hierarchy and quality of
The textures of the spaces they relate to, a sense of arrival and passage is exaggerated through the use of various materials. The Persian handmade tiles next to the sharp lines of the customized oak furniture give a sense of handmade precision to the space. The overall white, rose and champion colors of the interiors reflect the desire of the owner for a neutral, naked space that can help to visually and mentally detach from the noise and chaos of a saturated city like Tehran.
The main challenge of the project was to squeeze an office space required by the owner on to the existing plan and examine the role of such a space as a shared communal area within the home, therefore, walls around the former bedroom which previously wrapped around the balcony hiding the light and the view from the rest of the apartment had to be tweaked by the placement of a new space for an office which then along with the balcony, would open up a vibrant dialogue with the rest of the house, in this sense the role of the office was not just to have a room for an office but to create a multi-functional piece of furniture that would communicate accordingly with the rest of the adjacent spaces and also accommodate various functions within its mass, a looped mass that through extruding, shifting and linking of its surfaces creates a multifunctional envelope ,along its path, the mass becomes a hanging wall acting as also a fire place to control the visual connection between the living room and the office creating a semi private space, the mass is further modified to create a bench that acts as storage as well as a viewing deck towards the balcony ,a place for reflecting.
Towards the end of the loop is the heart of the office- the desk itself- with framed views to the balcony for concentration and playfulness. In a way the office is a centralized threshold; semi private, floating with uncertain physical boundaries.
The difficulty of designing this new configuration was to keep the second bedroom which was now replaced by the office and find an optimized new location for it to have both privacy and enough light to be still functional as a second bedroom.
The use of Ash wood flooring, oak veneer fitted furniture, Persian marble and customized handmade ceramic tiles give a sense of handmade quality to the apartment.