A suspended white house in the middle of the black rocks of Iran

Holidays is the time of the year when the rhythm of life and time slow down. At Igol House, Dutch studio Ilinx explores different architectural actions that seem to materialize this suspension and chase slowness. The lot is located on a terraced slope in Igol, a village near Tehran where, over the years, numerous excavations caused by unplanned constructions have destroyed the wild and mountainous landscape. When the owners bought the land, it consisted of nine steep terraces. The architects therefore chose to avoid further excavation, adding material rather than removing it.

The house is placed on two of the upper terraces, acting as a threshold, dividing and connecting the terraced gardens upstream from those downstream. The car is left at street level under the first terrace. To access the interior, one moves slowly between the layered gardens and the light staircases that change their direction in an unpredictable and playful way, or via an external inclined lift that runs along the gardens. The experience of travelling on this  lift is a celebration to inclination and obliquity.

Like a tightrope walker, poised between three different directions, Igol House thus seems to remain suspended and floating, always keeping its inhabitants in direct relationship with the mountainous landscape that surrounds it through its arched openings, rooftop terrace and layered gardens. The garden, which for centuries has been imagined and re-imagined in multiple forms in architecture, poetry, miniature art and the Iranian carpet, acquires here a fundamental role, in some cases activating movement, in others inviting permanence. And so it is that at kitchen level the garden is a vegetable garden with fruit trees, while lower down it accommodates aromatic plants. Sometimes it is a swimming pool where you can relax, and on another level it is a pool where you can listen to the flowing of water. It can also become a meeting place or an intimate space for silence and rest.