SARVESTAN Apartments: A Green Facade in Tehran

Pasdaran is a dense, rapidly changing district in northern Tehran where older low-rise houses are being replaced by taller apartment blocks. Green space is disappearing. Traffic is growing. The scale of the buildings is outpacing the infrastructure. SARVESTAN Apartments, designed by KARABON, is a seven-storey residential building on a narrow site that pushes back against this trend in two specific ways: it preserves the street-facing garden as a public-facing forecourt with mature trees, and it wraps the facade in a perforated metal screen that holds climbing vines, effectively turning the elevation into a vertical garden.

The project was completed in 2020. The site is long and narrow, constrained by neighbouring buildings on both sides. KARABON's strategy was to pull the building back from the street, open the ground level as a planted forecourt, and stack the apartments above a basement parking level. The facade is a composition of white cladding, black steel, and green foliage. Inside, the apartments have flexible open plans, full-height glazing on the upper floors, and a central light well that brings daylight deep into the plan.

The Street Garden and Entry Sequence

The most radical move is at the ground level. The architects removed the traditional boundary wall between the building and the street, opening the forecourt as a small urban garden with mature trees, stone paving, and planted edges. A black steel footbridge crosses a reflecting water channel toward the warm-lit lobby. The lobby itself is a simple space with grey plastered walls, a polished stone floor, black lounge chairs, and a planter holding climbing vines. The entry sequence transforms a dense Tehran sidewalk into a moment of pause.

The Facade: White, Perforated, and Green

The facade is the building's identity. A white cladding base with a subtle chequered texture rises the full height of the building, interrupted by deep balconies wrapped in perforated black steel panels. The panels have a chevron or hexagonal pattern that filters light into the apartments while hiding the balcony interiors from the street. Climbing vines have been planted to grow over the panels and cascade down the facade. Over time, the building is designed to become progressively greener: the white cladding is the base, and the vines are the finish.

The detail of the perforated panels is consistent throughout: chevron-patterned black steel with horizontal cable balustrades, cable-supported so the vines can climb freely. From inside a balcony, the view out is filtered through the perforations and the foliage. From the street, the building reads as a white volume with a green shimmer.

Interiors and the Light Well

The apartment interiors are flexible open plans with full-height black-framed glazing wrapping the corner facades. The polished dark floors and neutral walls let the view over the neighbouring rooftops become the dominant feature. One interior uses a saturated orange corridor as a spatial accent, inserted into an otherwise white apartment. The central light well is the plan's structural innovation: a double-height concrete void with climbing vines on the walls and a glass floor grating at the bottom that allows daylight to reach the lower levels.

The Rooftop Garden

The rooftop is a garden. A black steel pergola runs along the centre, covered in climbing vines, with long benches on both sides and a planted bed with a tree at the middle. The city surrounds the roof on all sides. In a neighbourhood where green space is scarce, the roof becomes the building's most generous amenity: a place for the residents to sit, meet, and see the trees and the hills beyond.

Drawings

The ground-floor plan shows the strategy clearly: parking fills the basement at the back of the site, while the street-facing portion is given over to the planted forecourt with trees. The section cuts through the full building, revealing the basement parking, seven residential floors with zigzag stairs connecting them, and the rooftop garden with its pergolas and trees. The building is compact, but every level contributes to the residents' experience.

Why This Project Matters

Urban apartment buildings in rapidly densifying cities tend to eliminate rather than preserve green space. They replace gardens with paving, courtyards with parking ramps, and planted forecourts with blank walls. SARVESTAN Apartments demonstrates that density and green space are compatible if the ground level, the facade, and the roof are all treated as planting opportunities. The perforated metal screens are not just sun shading; they are a trellis for vines. The forecourt is not just an entry; it is a public garden. The roof is not just technical; it is a shared outdoor room.

If you are designing urban housing, a medium-density residential block, or any building in a dense city where green space is contested, this project is worth studying for how a few specific moves can reclaim ground, facade, and roof as planted surfaces.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If you are working on urban housing, green facades, or medium-density residential architecture, uni.xyz is a place to publish your work and connect with a global design community.

Project credits: SARVESTAN Apartments by KARABON. Pasdaran, Tehran, Iran. Photographs: Mehdi Panahi.