A home for Tuesdays

A holiday is two days; life is five

Most buildings by the sea are designed for Friday. For the moment you open the door, put the suitcase against the wall and look at the horizon. That moment is valuable, but it is short. A home shows itself in the days after: when clothes need to dry, when autumn humidity finds its way through the window joints, and when one person at home has to work while another sleeps.

We started Hess-e Zendegi from these ordinary days. The first question was not how the façade looks from the road. It was what route a family takes through this building, from morning to night, on a Tuesday in the Iranian month of Aban (autumn).

The threshold, where the city stays behind the door

Arriving home does not begin at the door of the unit. It begins at the car park, the lobby, the few steps between the street and the lift. In the Hess-e Zendegi plan, the lobby and reception desk, the valet parking and four lifts (according to the brochure) are there to keep this short route calm: so the week's shopping goes up without a search for parking, and a guest reaches the unit without being lost.

These details are not visible in a photograph. But they are what, after a year of living there, tells one building apart from the one next door.

The terrace, a room whose ceiling is the sky

In the Caspian climate, a terrace is not only a view. It is a room in which part of the year's life takes place, and in other seasons it shields the window from slanting rain and afternoon sun. A terrace designed only for photographs is narrow and goes unused. A terrace designed for living has room for a breakfast table, and its shade reaches the glass door.

In the Hess-e Zendegi types, from 154 to 265 square metres, the terrace is part of the plan, not an addition to it. Two 157 m² types are listed in the brochure; compare each type's terrace with that type's plan, because two families with the same floor area do not necessarily live the same way.

Shared spaces, a home larger than the unit

When the rain does not stop for a week, a home feels small. This is where shared spaces make sense. The gym, pool, spa, sauna and jacuzzi, children's room and play area in the Hess-e Zendegi plan are there for the days when the sea is outside and life has to carry on within.

But amenities are worth something only if they keep working after handover. A pool whose maintenance cost is unclear becomes a memory after two winters. So before buying in any development, Hess-e Zendegi included, ask about the management and maintenance cost of the common areas; the answer matters as much as the plan.

From line to life

At Azhianeh, architecture and structural engineering have been at one table from the first day, and construction, from a certain point, became our own work. This continuity means that a line drawn on paper is tested again on site and reaches its result in the residents' lives. Hess-e Zendegi is the product of that path; a building near the sea that did not want to be only a weekend villa.

If you are thinking of permanent or part-time life in the north, read the plans against your own calendar, not against the photographs. See in which room your Tuesdays pass.

See also

• Hess-e Zendegi tower
• Azhianeh's approach
• Arrange a visit

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