In this exercise, students visited NGOs supporting women in need of support, asked them questions about their fears, and engaged in in-depth conversations. Through these conversations and questions, they were able to gather parts of these fears and represent them through simple visuals.

​Exploring Details in Persian Miniature​​​​​​​  

In the Studio 5 project, designing a residential complex at the University of Science and Culture,  we pursued an approach grounded in the social problems of Tehran. In this approach, instead of producing generic designs, students were asked to develop a proposal for women who had suffered severe trauma as a result of gender-based harassment. Setting aside structural and functional concerns, the project focused above all on shaping domestic healing spaces for this group of women. Some students decided to ban men from entering their residential 

Let's Attack the Bagh Melli Entrance!

Landscape Design Studios

In the Studio 5 project, designing a residential complex at the University of Science and Culture,  we pursued an approach grounded in the social problems of Tehran. In this approach, instead of producing generic designs, students were asked to develop a proposal for women who had suffered severe trauma as a result of gender-based harassment. Setting aside structural and functional concerns, the project focused above all on shaping domestic healing spaces for this group of women. Some students decided to ban men from entering their residential complex altogether! I accepted this provocation because it sparked endless critical debate in the classroom. Until the end of the term, students remained divided over this radical idea. Another important point was that, although students broke free from architecture's conventional functions, they still needed to examine social and cultural dimensions with the eye of an anthropologist and a sociologist. They had to derive their designs from the real fears that women experience in urban, semi-urban, and domestic spaces. Equally important was the project's symbolic dimension: it had to stand in the heart of Tehran as a loud cry aimed at passersby who are either perpetrators of gender-based harassment or who have remained silent and indifferent to it.

A Woman in a Garden!

Landscape Design Studios