Commissioned by Princess Shams Pahlavi, the Morvarid Palace was a private residence for her and her husband Mehrdad Pahlbod, then Minister of Art & Culture, in Mehrshahr, Karaj. Currently it is a Basiji recreational base or dormitory or something like this.
Cabinet editor Sina Najafi speaks about his Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark’s Fake Estates project in 2007 at the Department of Architecture at Penn state:
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“This book is a graphic guide to ornaments in the twentieth century. It unveils the function of ornament as the agent for specific affects, dismantling the idea that ornament is applied to buildings as a discrete or non-essential entity. Each case operates through greater or lesser depth to exploit specific synergies between the exterior and the interior, constructing an internal order between ornament and material. These internal orders produce expressions that are contemporary, yet whose affects are resilient in time.”
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Farshid Moussavi is a founding partner of Foreign Office Architects and “Professor in Practice of Architecture” at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.
Nader Khalili was a California based humanitarian architect best known for his development of the Geltaftan Earth-and-Fire System known as Ceramic Houses and the Earthbag Construction technique called Super Adobe. In 1991 he founded the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth) and was a U.N. consultant for Earth Architecture. Khalili published numerous books on his architectural philosophy & techniques as well as translations of poetry from Rumi, whom he considered instrumental in his design theories. Khalili was a pioneer and leader in the realm of of ethically and socially based architecture.
