User:Maryamt

Dear Mr. Alikhani ta unja ke type shode ferestadam Lot fan molaheze konid THANX Name of project: Restaurant and Fast food Vali-e-Asr Street. Employer: Mr.Madjid Haqanian and company. Organization: Consulting Engineers of Doran shahr. Director Manager: MR.Davood Ebrahimian. Destination: Head Designer and Project manager. Start time (design): December 2003. Start time (performance): August 2004. Situation: Performing stage. Size of location: 40 m* 10 m (East-West) Access: East from Downtown Vali_e_Asr Street. West from Mardoukhi Avenue. Structure: High tech CCL concriate structure systems.

INTRODUCTION

This project was a combination of two main functions, the first and more important part was a four floors FAST FOOD Restaurant and the second ,was five floors official departments, which were supposed to be travel agencies or something like that.

The first motive to do some case like this was that the employer had a personal ambition to establish a serial fast food restaurant in Iran and this was the first branch. In order to secure some part of budget he decided to add some official part.

At first when he came to my office with this purpose, he hadn’t chosen any place for its construction, but after a while he chose a  good and logical location in downtown Vali-e-Asr street where could be a good guarantee  for restaurant’s future .Despite its perfect location, the situation had some problems, for instance ,the land  was really narrow and long .There was another difficulty, level alteration from the first point in east up to the last point of the location in west was about 9.00 meters in less than 50 meters!

Any way it seemed to be a really challenging case and I was keen on doing that. I organized some continues meeting and negotiation with the employer in order to know what his imagination was and what did he want from my designing. To sum up, I tried to do my best to understand him. I recognized that he had an in depth open mind to appreciate any development and modern technology. In the other word, I understand that he wanted to have a completely modern building both on its surface appearance and even in its smallest elements. I prepared an official package of my handwriting of those meeting to save overall attitudes, opinions, agreements, and disagreements and so on.

This package was a base for me to start my work.

PERSONAL JOB DESCRIPTION

As usual, I divided my job to some parts like studies, researching, conceptual scheme designing, and development of the selected scheme and so on.

So, I started with the stage of studies .In this stage, I prepared some general information. About various items, for instance the Climate. In this subject, I studied a number of general and reference books to collect some global and particular information about various determinative factors like annual raining quantity, the alteration of the sun light direction and 24 hours temperature variation during four seasons in Iran, etc.

Then, I did some geographical studies about locations general gradient, its overall views and of course the most important factor, the locations soil natural resistance. I cooperated with a soil resistance test laboratory to do this part. To get a realistic view, I went to the Organization of Topography and Seismology to provide a map of Tehran’s general faults. This is really vital matter, because Tehran has a high capacity in earthquake and there are a number of major faults passing through some areas in city.

I estimated that we would face with some difficultes in this subject because the location had an unusual size.

In addition, I was linking continuesly to the internet to make my information reliable and up to date .Unfortunately there is always lack of reliability in scientific information in my country.

During doing these studies, I arranged with my topographer team to provide a completely realistic map from the site with their most progressive equipment, including the exact dimensions, the height variation and any other visible specifications. Of course, I had an official map which was not reliable enough to use.

I used Auto cad drawing software to use the topography’s task result to reach a three-dimension simulation of the location which was enough realistic.

During doing the studies’ stage, I usually start to design some primary schemes. As usual in this case, I began to make some schematic and conceptual designing based on my mental background and imagination of the projects overall subject.

I followed the studies with the consideration of rules, laws, regulation and standards in the field of constructive activities in Iran and Tehran. This part was really important for my designing to avoid any unwanted change in the future. Then, I collected a number of same projects in the world to study how every designer in any particular situation had developed a scheme designing. For example, I collected works done by the most famous architecture in the world like DANIEL LIBSKIND, FRANK O GEHRY, ZAHA HADID, HARRY SIEIDLER, PETER PRAN, etc. Based on my scientific designing process and the project requirement, I provided a list of inner spaces. This list was consisted of the spaces functions, their minimum required area and each space’s maximum capacity. I had reached to this minimum area number by using a number of international reference books like THE ARCHITECTURAL TIME SAVER and THE NOYFERT reference book. This process was necessary for my designing suited to make my calculations and estimations logical and acceptable. Then, I prepared a complex of vertical and horizontal diagrams to analyze these functions, their connection and their reactions in a unique construction.

I used some of drawing and graphical software like PHOTO-SHOP, 3D STUDIO-MAX, EXCELL and COREL-DRAW to provide some three dimensions diagrams showing all physical programming in this project. Then after doing all above activities, I seriously started to design. My tools were my hand-sketches, ARCHI CAD drawing software, 3D-STUDIO MAX animation making software and of course my knowledge which was based on above mentioned studies and my experience in public building designing. I was looking for a different space description which wasn’t limited in walls, floor, windows and so on, especially in this case, with the project’s unusual size and dimension and its little access to the natural sun light. Every thing in this case had a boundary, at the beginning; I tried to separate walls and floors, particularly in the restaurant part. I imagined that it wasn’t a four floors restaurant and I considered a big space with a number of free floors floating in it without any contact with the walls. From the logical point of view, I thought that I could benefit a high technology constructing methods for it. For instance, construction cable system was an acceptable way. Unfortunately there is a huge lack of construction technology in my country-Iran-and every designer is hardly forced to adjust himself/herself with the existence facilities and abilities. So, I had to adopt my concept with the restrictions.

In consequence, I decided to consider some transparent textures for the floating floors, like glass or some combination of Poly carbonates. Transparency was a good concept for such place with a lot of limitations, and it was a tool to pull the sun light in to the depth of spaces. For floors connection I designed some transparent, light and floating stairs to lead patrons through the levels. In the following, I resulted that both western and eastern facades should be a coherence glass surface in order to achieve maximum sufficiency of the sun light and views.Form the horizontal view, I put public functions-dining area-all next to the eastern side where was next to the main downtown street and had an open surface to the east. By attention to the location longitude profile, restaurant was authorized to have four floors consisted of one basement and three receptive and dining floors. According to my calculations, restaurant highest roof was at the level of Western Street, from this level, I began to design the official parts. At first; I considered two first floors for car parking with the access from the western street .Consideration of parking is one of the inflexible and unavoidable construction regulations in Tehran. In my opinion, this part despite its particular problem had some advantages. For example; these two floors were acting like a medium area connecting building two different functions-restaurant and offices. Of course, I had to use a car elevator, because there was not enough area for locating an acceptable car ramp. There seemed not to be any right place for the car elevator too. Building short latitude didn’t allow doing so. Finally, I put it in the entrance zone. Of course, I consulted to a number of elevators and escalator companies and then I chose a hydraulic elevator with two opening one in the entrance and another in the opposite. By putting this elevator at the western side, there remain enough places for car parks. In upper floors-offices-I faced with another problem. In contrast to lower floors-restaurant and parking-this function required more access to the sun light. By attention to its longitude and latitude length it was difficult to make all spaces accessible to the sunlight. I needed to design a long vertical void to make it possible. In conclusion, the construction was horizontally divided to two parts, eastern and western wages, and a vertical and wide void was connecting them, in addition to a narrow and floating connecting bridge. At the end of this part’s designing, I had a complete building with all required functions except mechanical zone .Before doing design Part, I had consulted with some specialist in the field of electrical and mechanical matter and I had decided from the first to put this equipment all on the final roof. This had two advantages, first there weren’t enough places in the building for this purpose, and second based on my studies it’s better to locate equipment in upper level to make them more sufficient. So, I did so and for protecting this equipment against dust, rain and wind, I designed a light and transparent surface for their coverage. Both, during designing processes and after its finishing, I had a continuously contact with relevant specialists, such as structure, electrical systems and mechanical system engineers. This was really vital because these subjects had an actually determinative role in this building’s construction organization. In the structure subject, I began to consult with relevant engineers from the beginning of the designing period. I had decided to choose a metal system structure for the projects construction but because of pervious mentioned lacks in my country and of course because of some restrictive rules, I changed my mind and decided to consider a concriate structure system. This had its own problems, for instance every concriate structure would take a considerable area of location’s total area and the projects land was already too small to loose any more area. Also, I didn’t want to have any between space’s columns, so I had a lot of numbers of big columns at the exterior edges, in addition to floor’s beams with a large section. After some studies, I and my office with the agreement of the Employer, decided to think about a new construction method which was too new in my country. This was CCL structure system; this company was a branch of a big British company. In this system we could have no beam! Of course just when columns distance is less than 10.00 meters. I arranged a number of meetings consisted of me, the Employer and CCL consulting engineers. In my own individual negotiation with this company, I and their engineer began to study on the CCL structure system and its behavior in my project. I was forced to agree with some changes. Also, because of earthquake relevant rules and regulation and of course the most important thing, the safety of the construction, I had to agree with other alternation. Any way this matter was completely unavoidable .For example, in every construction there is a need of two series of section walls, which should be in the two perpendicular extensions. In eastern-western extension it was simple, but in northern-southern it wasn’t so. There, I had a really short length and any additional wall cutting my interior space was in contrast to my overall concept. After consulting with the structure engineer, I agreed with the bringing of latitude beams acting like section walls. Two next cases were the electrical and the mechanical architectural prediction. First, I consulted with the both group of engineers, the same as what happened in the structure case. In addition to the optical designing subject, I decided to work on the aquatic subject in a different way. In the other word, I tried to make an interior space-in restaurant-comminuted of the sound, light and architectural elements working all together .So, I met a number of relevant persons, from aquatic specialist up to some musician who helped me to achieve an in depth attitude to the music and its effects and influence on public places and so on. In this way, I studied a bit about Booda bar café in Paris.Also, I collected a lot of a number of musical albums from various art fields, such as classical, pop, rock, heavy metal and some of my country’s music. During this period, I noticed that I should pay more attention to the matter of furniture in the basement-restaurant main kitchen. The employer had chosen one kitchen equipment producing company. Head Company was located in USA, but one of its branches was located next to my country, Dubai. I arranged for a meeting with them and hence I traveled to Dubai. My seven days mission was consisted of these parts: visiting the branch head, brief describing of the project, and study on chosen equipment and their circulation in the basement and also in the back desk areas. This was mostly in order to avoid any possible difficulties in the future, because this equipment would be installed at the finishing of the last stage.

On the exterior surface,as I‘ve said before, I wanted a pure and coherence transport face. I had studied about glass performance systems and its facilities in my country; I chose glass spider system for the project’s elevations. It’s a really efficient construction system which is still new in Iran. I had to find an original company which was authorized for doing such construction. Finally I chose LAMGLASS COMPANY, which had a good international reputation in making such construction. Then I provided a package of their purposes based on my designing.

I finished the stage of designing which was also consisted of interior elements designing in the building three functions. This part was a result of a cooperation with my office interior designer and graphic designer who helped me in doing that. There were also a number of persons who were necessary, for example there were four drawer persons and one professional animator. I was responsible to manage them all suited to achieve a complete and acceptable work. During the project’s performing period, I was the supervisor of the project’s workplace. I was only responsible person for the documents accuracy and I was providing all the particular performing details and so on. This project is still in process,of course because of some unwanted evolutions in construction organization regulations.