Humidity: The First Client of Every Building on the Mazandaran Coast

The client who never comes to a meeting

Every project has several clients: the landowner, the buyer, the municipality. In the north there is one more, who never sits at the table yet has the last word. Humidity. Not on handover day, but in the third winter, when a stain appears in the corner of the bathroom ceiling, a wooden door no longer closes properly, and a white facade develops grey streaks.

For us, accepting this client means starting the design with it, rather than looking for answers at the end of the work.

Air has to be able to pass through the home

In the mild, humid climate of the Caspian, still air is the enemy. A home with only one open side does not move its air, and damp settles in the corners. Cross ventilation, meaning air that can pass from one side to the other, was the rule in traditional northern Iranian architecture. Village houses in Gilan and Mazandaran were raised on a high plinth, and their porches opened toward the wind.

In a tower, this rule takes another form: mechanical ventilation in bathrooms and kitchens that genuinely works, windows that can be left slightly open without rain coming in, and a plan that keeps dark, windowless rooms to a minimum.

Slanting rain and the depth of shade

Rain in the north does not always fall straight down. The wind drives it against the facade and under doors. The depth of a terrace and the projection of a roof are protective decisions before they are aesthetic ones. A deep terrace shields the window from the strong afternoon sun and keeps rain away from the door joint.

So when we speak of continuous, deep terraces in designs such as Rokan Line or Rokan Pine, we are speaking a language the climate suggested, not a fashion.

Materials: what ages by the sea

Salty, humid air corrodes unprotected metal quickly, warps untreated wood and gives moss a home on porous surfaces. On the coast, choosing materials is less a question of colour than of upkeep: what will this surface look like in ten years, and who will clean it?

In the Z Mist study in the Nowshahr highlands, timber, stone and dark surfaces appear in the materials narrative. Wherever such materials are proposed, their construction details and maintenance plan must come with them; otherwise the beauty of day one becomes the debt of year five.

Details, where a building tells the truth

Humidity enters through joints: where the window meets the wall, through a terrace floor that slopes inward, through a pipe that passes through the facade without being sealed. None of this shows in any render, but on site it is either built correctly or it is not.

Since the day Azhianeh was formed around the union of architecture and structural engineering, we have believed the distance between drawing and site should be short. By the sea, that distance is measured in centimetres and paid for in years.

See also

• Azhianeh's architectural approach
• the Z Mist study
• Hess-e Zendegi tower

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