AsNow Design & Construct Stacks a Stepped Medical Building over an Existing Steel Frame in Marivan

Small medical buildings rarely get much design attention. They tend to be speculative boxes, with a pharmacy at the base, consulting rooms stacked above, and a facade picked from whatever cladding was cheapest that year. The Marivan Medical Building by AsNow Design & Construct, led by Sonia Tatari and Ehsan Tavasoli, starts from that same program. It sits on one of Marivan's main boulevards and holds about 1,050 m² of pharmacy, laboratory, doctors' rooms and a cafe. What it does with that program is more ambitious.

The project's own diagrams describe how the building came about. They begin with an existing frame, then add vertical access, a second staircase, and a diagonal line of movement that steps up the block toward the roof. The result is a building that climbs rather than stacks. Green terraces and recesses rise across the facade the way houses rise up the hillsides behind it. We think this is the interesting part: a modest clinic that uses its circulation and section to say something about the town it serves.

A Narrow Block That Holds Its Corner

From the street, the building reads as a tight vertical slab of grey ribbed cladding cut by green frames. It isn't trying to be a landmark. It holds its plot between neighbours and lets the green insets do the work of drawing attention. From the corner the green looks less like decoration and more like an excavation, as if pieces of the grey mass had been removed to reveal a second building inside.

The elevated view puts it in context. Parked cars, street trees and hillside housing surround a block that is clearly urban and clearly local in scale. The architects have not inflated the volume to make a point, and that restraint is worth noting.

Stepping Toward the Mountains

The side elevation explains the project best. Volumes step back as they rise, and green panels and louvred openings catch the low afternoon sun with mountains in the distance. The terraces are not stuck on; they come from the diagonal stair that the diagrams trace through the building. Each setback marks a point where movement inside meets the outside.

Up close, the details hold up. Fluted green panels, pale vertical cladding and slatted window screens meet at the corners without fuss, and the balconies lock into the cladding instead of hanging off it. The slatted screens matter in a medical building. They filter views into consulting rooms along the street front and give the facade a fine grain that a curtain wall could not.

Working With the Frame That Was Already There

The black and white construction photo is the most revealing image in the set. A steel frame stands beside a scaffolded neighbour, with teal translucent volumes overlaid diagonally across it. That is the design idea in one image: take the frame as given, then thread a new spatial sequence through it.

Seen from below through tree branches, the finished building keeps some of that rawness. Ribbed cladding, louvred panels and green balcony frames stack in a way that lets you sense the grid behind them. The diagrams list the exposed structure as one of their moves, and it gives the building an honesty that suits a town where unfinished frames are a common sight on the street.

A Pharmacy That Pulls You In

At ground level the green moves from accent to environment. A narrow passage runs along the glazed pharmacy front, with green walls and a black planter of shrubs softening the edge. At the entrance, a green steel beam, a planted bed and a slatted screen frame the threshold. It is a small gesture, but it gives the street something a typical shopfront does not: a pause, and a bit of planting, before the door.

Inside, the same corrugated green metal wraps the walls above white cabinets and pale green floor tiles, with daylight coming in through the glazed entrance. The material carries straight through from outside to inside, which keeps the base reading as one piece.

Retail Space Treated as Architecture

Pharmacy interiors are usually shelving systems with a ceiling above them. Here, the green corrugated walls, green tile floor and tall glazing give the room a coherent character before any product arrives. Black ductwork runs exposed under a green ceiling, continuing the frankness of the frame above.

The palette is committed to the point of being bold, and we think it works because it is consistent. Ribbed green counters echo the fluted exterior panels, the white sales desk and display case read as furniture set into a monochrome shell, and leather benches suggest the room expects people to wait, not just pass through.

A Lantern After Dark

At dusk the building changes register. The lit shopfront anchors the base, yellow windows punctuate the slatted upper floors, and the green insets glow against a darkening sky. The side facade, facing a hillside of densely packed houses, makes the connection between the building and its surroundings plain: one more lit volume in a town that climbs.

For a clinic that keeps evening hours, this matters. A medical building that is legible and welcoming after dark serves its public better than one that goes blank once the shutters come down.

Plans and Drawings

The plans are disciplined. A square footprint holds the entrance, waiting area, pharmacy counter, drug stores and laboratory at ground level. Above, a central stair core organises a meeting room and kitchen, then secretary desks, waiting areas and doctors' and examination rooms, with consulting rooms mostly lined along the street front.

The waiting areas change shape from floor to floor: a long strip with two small terraces on one level, a wide hall across the middle on another. That variation is where the diagonal section shows up in plan. Higher up, a cafe with a terrace sits beside doctors' rooms, a social space set among clinical ones.

The roof plan finishes the climb with a cafe, round tables, a planted parapet and a circular feature near the stair. The section shows the stepped profile between neighbouring blocks, above a glazed ground-floor shop and street trees.

The isometric diagrams set out the logic step by step: existing frame, vertical access, second staircase, matching ground-floor material, diagonal stair movement, a skyline line, exposed structure and the pharmacy entrance. The final collage is the most poetic, with a photograph of a stepped village climbing diagonally across the roof plane toward a mountain slope. It states the concept outright: the building as a compressed hillside settlement.

Why This Project Matters

Most cities in the region are full of mid-rise commercial buildings like this one: a frame, a shop below, offices above, built quickly and forgotten. The Marivan Medical Building shows how much room for design sits inside that ordinary type. AsNow did not need an unusual program or an open site. It needed a clear idea about movement, a strong section and a material palette applied with conviction.

The reference to stepped villages could easily have turned into pastiche. It doesn't, because it is expressed through circulation, terraces and a rooftop cafe rather than through imitation of traditional forms. For architects working on small healthcare and mixed-use buildings in dense towns, this project is a useful precedent: an existing frame can be the starting point for a building with a real point of view.

Marivan Medical Building by AsNow Design & Construct (lead architects Sonia Tatari and Ehsan Tavasoli; design team Neda Jahantab, Masoomeh Samadi, Farid Rajabi and Nila Shahmohammadi), Marivan, Iran. Area: 1,050 m². Completed: 2025. Photography: Mohammad Hosein Hamzehlouei.

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