veil to vault

Veil to Vault
Architect: Babak Abnar


Photographs: Mohammad Hassan Ettefagh - Babak Abnar

Kuhsar Alborz
Year: 2025

This house emerges from the interplay of the three actors in its layered nature. It forms a trichotomy that responds to the specific, present needs of its user :

 

– The first layer is a veil protecting bodies while opening them to nature.

– The second is a hidden chamber for music and its community.

– The third is the domestic life that lies between.

1. The Veil

Safeguarding and protecting often come with enclosure, sharp demarcation, and consequently oppression. Here, privacy and a sense of safety are created through a playful use of natural light and openings in all directions to avoid imposing such boundaries on users. 


It allows the body to meet nature in comfort, offering privacy without confinement and exposure without vulnerability. This architectural fold is about skin under light and shadow, a gesture of intimacy, not isolation.    

2. The Vault

Consumption of music as a cultural product, beyond solitary listening, comes with hurdles and restrictions that have led to the rise of underground subcultures which continue to thrive. Collective listening experiences such as concerts and performances are heavily surveilled and often prosecuted. Here, a safe hidden chamber is created to facilitate this contemporary phenomenon, giving rise to a new mode of living and an evolving residential typology.

This emerging typology builds upon the traditional inward and outward (introvert and extrovert) relationship of Iranian houses by introducing an above and below dimension, a vertical split that reflects both physical space and a vertical split that reflects both physical space and the social reality of the subculture. 

 

Such a typology will likely grow; however, it currently lacks an urban underground infrastructure, and that infrastructure would evolve alongside it unless a major sociol shift takes place.

This fold of the house lies beneath the surface, offering deep sound isolation and immersive intimacy.

 

It is a space of shelter and sound, where what is hidden is not silenced, but amplified.

3.The Domestic Life in between

Between these layers, an everyday home unfolds, suspended between depth and daylight, solitude and gathering.

 

This domestic realm anchors the family at the threshold between the other two layers.

This emerging typology builds upon the traditional inward and outward (introvert and extrovert) relationship of Iranian houses by introducing an above and below dimension, a vertical split that reflects both physical space and a vertical split that reflects both physical space and the social reality of the subculture. 

 

Such a typology will likely grow; however, it currently lacks an urban underground infrastructure, and that infrastructure would evolve alongside it unless a major sociol shift takes place.

This trichotomy generates liminalities through which the essence of each actor seeps into the others, both in materiality and in function. Although each space retains its own qualities when thresholds are crossed, no sharp demarcation is imposed to enforce separation