Bronze A' Design Award Winner 2025
Salva abed kahnamouei's Porch Multifunctional Space explores the productive tension between residential intimacy and commercial presentation, situating itself within contemporary retail design's ongoing negotiation between experiential hospitality and functional merchandising imperatives, the project demonstrates particular sensitivity to material storytelling where traditional craft elements such as the terracotta herringbone flooring establish historical continuity and tactile authenticity while sleek metal armatures and minimalist furnishings assert contemporary design consciousness, creating a temporal layering that honors heritage while embracing present formal vocabularies. The compositional achievement rests significantly in the deployment of curvilinear metal display structures whose graceful arched profiles activate vertical space without visual obstruction, these slender frameworks allowing sightlines to penetrate deep into the retail environment while establishing clear merchandise zones, their blackened finish providing graphic contrast against pale architectural surfaces and creating a legible organizational diagram that guides circulation and discovery, the repetition of arched forms across both structural display elements and architectural niches generates visual rhyming that unifies disparate functional components into coherent aesthetic narrative. Chromatic restraint demonstrates sophisticated understanding of how neutrality can amplify rather than diminish spatial experience, the warm-toned terracotta floor providing essential thermal grounding while cream pedestals and pale walls create luminous expansiveness, this tonal foundation allowing merchandise colors to assert presence without competition, strategic accent colors in displayed garments functioning as calibrated punctuation rather than overwhelming saturation. The integration of residential-scaled seating elements including the sculptural lounge chair and ottoman suggests the space aspires to transcend transactional retail conventions, instead proposing a model of leisurely engagement where browsing becomes contemplative activity and selection occurs within frameworks of comfort and consideration rather than urgency, this hospitality gesture signaling respect for visitor experience and recognition that meaningful commerce often emerges from unhurried encounter. Lighting design achieves notable sophistication through the overhead track system whose rectilinear configuration contrasts productively with organic floor elements, adjustable spotlights creating focused pools of illumination that dramatize key presentations while maintaining overall ambient luminosity that prevents visual fatigue, natural daylight filtered through sheer curtains contributes essential temporal variation as changing sun angles animate surfaces throughout the day, foliage shadows cast on ceiling planes bringing exterior natural rhythms into interior experience. The architectural vocabulary of arched niches evokes classical and vernacular building traditions, these recessed alcoves providing both practical storage solutions and symbolic resonance, the arch form throughout history signifying threshold, passage, shelter, and human aspiration, here domesticated to commercial purpose yet retaining archetypal power. One might consider how this environment negotiates the contemporary challenge of physical retail space in an increasingly digital commercial landscape, proposing that tactile material presence, spatial grace, and experiential hospitality constitute compelling arguments for embodied shopping encounters, the space inviting visitors to contemplate how thoughtful design elevates everyday transactions into moments of aesthetic pleasure and how environments can honor both functional requirements and human desires for beauty, comfort, and meaningful encounter with curated objects.
The designers faced a difficult task of blending traditional Iranian elements with the modern aesthetic, but still made it possible to create harmony in this multifunctional space. Gray and dark blue palettes were used together with naked finishes to create a modern background. While the old wooden floors were carefully preserved, they skillfully integrated modern looking mirrors and arches, which are a combination of traditional and contemporary architectural styles.