Kand-kaav Villa Sets A Playful Rhythm Across Terraced Ground in Iran
Kand-kaav Villa sits in Mashhad, Iran, where Abar Office shapes a weekend house around steep terrain and a seasonal river. The project embraces the slope with layered ground planes and a discreet glass entry while pushing a more exploratory sequence inside. What reads as a compact house from above unfolds as a network of rooms, terraces, and corridors tuned to gathering, retreat, and the climate.
A clear glass cube marks the entry. Beyond it, the terrain falls away as ground planes step down and lift up, trading solid earth for sheltered volumes and an open roofscape.
This house in Mashhad, Iran is by Abar Office, designed for weekends and steep ground. The plan prioritizes movement and sequence: layered earthwork sets the order, and a net of stairs and corridors choreographs daily life across a mix of rooms, terraces, and in-betweens.
Enter The Cube
Only a transparent cube signals arrival. Step through, and the building yields to the land as most rooms sit within the cut, protected and oriented toward the valley for light and air. The entry reads as a pause before descent, a moment of brightness that frames the shift from open ground to carved interior.
Layer, Cut, Lift
The ground is worked like strata. Planes are layered, cut, then gently lifted to form ceilings and roofs, leaving the earth legible while making shelter where needed. Walls arrive later as vertical plates, visually independent from slabs to keep the horizontal surfaces continuous and calm, a move that sets up the project’s RoofScape concept.
Stairs Shape Movement
Circulation drives discovery. A stair-rich system threads enclosed rooms with open and semi-open courts, staging shifts in light, view, and temperature across short runs and landings. Corridors act like alleys between volumes—sometimes purely visual, sometimes fully inhabitable—so the route becomes a daily ritual of crossing thresholds and reading the mass-void arrangement.
Zoning For Seasons
Use changes with weather. Public rooms lift toward air and prospect, private quarters settle deeper in the cut, and collective areas sit where breezes turn gentle despite prevailing winds. The plan calibrates gathering and retreat, scaling up for parties or down for quiet, while planting mixes deliberate selections with areas left to natural succession (a measured give-and-take with the site).
Roofscape And Ground
Roof, ceiling, and landscape read as one. That continuity cools the eye and keeps movement legible, turning the top surface into a lived terrain rather than a cap. Paths on the roof align with routes below, a stacked map that supports wandering without losing bearings.
Light catches the lifted planes at day’s end. As shadows lengthen along cuts and stairs, the house settles back into the slope, its sequence ready to be walked again tomorrow.
Photography by Diman Studio
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