Marbella Apartment-Villa Complex

Marbella is a residential building project with an area of 38000 m2 and 10 upper ground floors near the Caspian Sea in the North of Iran. The plot is located in the northern part of an existent villa complex. In this project, the rich local architecture in the north of Iran was analyzed to develop a design approach which led to the main design question: How can we employ simple but efficient solutions and structures used by traditional architects on a rural micro scale to overcome environmental and climatic difficulties in a macro scale residential complex? For this purpose, four structural elements of rural houses were extracted from the research area: podium connected to the ground, vacant spaces above podium (to let the air flow freely and disconnect moist soil from main part of building, as well as providing sea view and sea breeze for southern existent villa complex), peripheral porches with pillars, and finally the upper inclined roof. Therefore, the lobby and shared spaces of the tower were designed as the podium of the abovementioned traditional houses. Similar to the local architecture, residential floors were built in considerable distances from the ground to let the air flow freely and remove humidity. The balconies constructed around the residential space in the traditional architecture in the north of Iran inspired the semi open spaces around residential units. The separate house units on the upper floors were also inspired by the inclined roofs of rural houses. The initial structure of the project was designed as a long volume (stretching from the east to the west) to respond the plot geometry as well as matching the project program. The program also necessitated creating simultaneous views of the forest (in the south) and the sea (in the north) at all units. To prevent the project from overshadowing villas, the locations and angles of volumes were arranged in the maximum distance possible from the villas located in the southern part of the project. Moreover, each volume was rotated at a specific angle inside the site to maximize its view of the surrounding environment (forest and sea). The public spaces on the ground floor and the pathways to the open area of first floor were designed to keep the lower floors and public spaces along the existent sidewalks around the villa complex to maximize both functional and visual alignment/consistency.