Afra House project started as a renovation of a very old house located in Lavasan, which is a small town north of Tehran, Iran. The house was on top of a slope in a property with a split-level in its land, creating a rough passageway to get to the house from the entrance including a long flight of stairs and a path through the garden. The main objectives of the project defined based on the existing condition of the house, which was first, to convert the two separate levels of the building into a duplex by inserting a staircase. Secondly, rethinking the accessibility to the main building from the entrance at the street level and finally adding a number of features and functions that are necessary to a vacation house, such as an outdoor pool, janitor’s suite, Jacuzzi and office space.
In order to facilitate the accessibility of the main building, the strategy was to place an elevator near the entrance to get to the level of the first floor of the villa and placing a small bridge connecting the elevator platform to the first-floor terrace of the house.
The new circulation system defined primary access via the elevator and the bridge, and secondary access through the landscape stairs and the garden. Since the main entrance of the house moved to the first floor, main public functions such as living room, kitchen and the guest bedroom were placed at the first floor, which left the smaller more secluded and private ground floor for two master bedrooms, a mini kitchen, and a small living room. In other words, the shift of the main entrance from the ground level to the first floor created a flipped typology were the public functions, which are usually at the ground level in the conventional house move to the first level, and the ground level housed the more private functions of the residence.
The split-level in the land and the altitude difference created an opportunity to form a three-story volume near the entrance providing the additional spaces project needed. This additional building contains the janitor’s suite at the ground level, office at the first level and a changing area and Jacuzzi at the second level near the outdoor pool. These spaces are accessible from the elevator that starts next to the parking spaces and reaches to the top of the added building at the level of the bridge.
