Building No. 23 is a residential project in Tehran’s Mahmoudieh district, designed in 2014 with construction completed in 2018. Its overall volume - a brick form referencing the common cube typology of Tehran apartments - establishes a different dialogue with the city through soft lines on the façade and curved surfaces at the corners. The architectural idea here goes beyond a single concept based solely on form or function. It is instead a collection of ideas arising from an insight into the characteristics of Iranian culture and art, aiming to create a human architecture connected to the original qualities of this land’s architecture. These qualities emerge from color and materials, light and shadow, spatial connection, harmony, and the principles of coexistence between people and nature: brick, turquoise, plants, stone, tile, pattern, color, movement, space, sensation, stillness, observation, inside, outside, silence, sky, light, shadow, purity... and from how the combination of these elements creates an architectural language for a living space.

Designing Plaque 23 involved navigating a complex set of expectations: to deliver a high-end residential building that simultaneously responds to Tehran’s chaotic public realm. While commissioned as a private development, the project was also implicitly tasked with engaging the city, contributing to the street, and embodying a collective identity—all within the constraints of a limited urban plot, tight budget, and regulatory restrictions.

The client’s vision extended beyond conventional residential needs, seeking architectural presence, spatial poetry, and cultural resonance. Balancing artistic ambition with pragmatic demands required constant negotiation, iteration, and a commitment to architectural integrity. Ultimately, the project stands as a response to the unspoken demand for meaning, calm, and public connection in a city that often lacks all three.

The main volume of the building is placed on a base that forms the ground floor. This floor includes the entrance area, lobby, swimming pool and gym, with direct access to the courtyard, common spaces and apartment units. The pool area floats somewhere between the inside and outside of the building, where light, view and color are the main ingredients of the space.

In conversation with the street, the volume of the ground floor volume retreats from the main mass, establishing a relationship with the city through the curved brick surface of the surrounding wall. The connection between the main entrance and the street is defined by creating an empty space that acts as an extension of the city into the project site, also serving as an accessible space for drop-offs. The red brick used on the ground floor and in the façade openings -where the transparency, light and the suspension between inside and outside create a distinct quality of spatial communication- is replaced in places by turquoise glazed brick. By giving the openings a third dimension and turning them into an intermediate space, continuous porches have been created. These are edged with greenery, lengthening the depth and quality of the connection between inside and outside.

A longitudinal axis in the plan defines the view and connection between the interior spaces of each apartment. This interface, whose primary function is circulation, links spaces of different sizes and uses. It is through this central space that the internal and external views are framed and the separation of public and private areas of the home is controlled.

An effort has been made to ensure the building is not merely an expression of architecture, but a space for human expression; for the presence of people and their connection with each other, with the city and with nature. It is intended as an environment blending a sense of familiarity with fantasy, creating a home as a space of peace, happiness and life.

Plaque 23 explores architecture through multiple carefully considered layers of scale to create a meaningful dialogue between the building, its users, and the city.

At the urban scale, the project steps back from the street, using a curved brick wall to establish a gentle, respectful connection with Tehran’s public realm. At the architectural scale, soft edges and volumetric clarity define the building’s presence and rhythm. At the threshold scale, the recessed ground floor becomes a mediating space between city and home, offering a moment of transition and openness. At the human scale, handcrafted materials—curved bricks, turquoise-glazed tiles, wood joinery—invite touch, texture, and intimacy. At the residential scale, a linear axis organizes spatial relationships within each apartment, enhancing flow and privacy. And at the poetic scale, architecture becomes a canvas for memory, color, and light—drawing from Persian culture to create a place of calm, beauty, and rooted identity.

In Plaque 23, scale is not simply a matter of measurement—it is a design tool to shape experience, evoke emotion, and bring architecture into harmony with its cultural and physical context.