Hamed Khosravi Boeken

The book revisits the history of the Modern Movement through the legacy of one of its protagonists, Gabriel Guevrekian (c. 1900—1970). Born in Istanbul, Guevrekian grew up in Tehran and then moved to Vienna to study architecture at the Kunstgewerbeschule; he later worked with Oskar Strnad, Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, Henri Sauvage, and Robert Mallet-Stevens and among his famous designs are the Cubist garden for Villa Noailles in France and two houses for the Vienna Werkbund exhibition. Not yet 30, Guevrekian was recognized as one of the protagonists of the European Avant-garde in Paris. During the 1930s, he spent a few years in Iran to design public buildings and later, after the Second World War, he took teaching responsibilities in Europe and America. All his various pursuits, and the homes and nationalities he held in Asia, Europe and then America, led to a serial adoption of personae. He made every discipline meaningful, every city central, every period epochal simply by his own very tangible engagement with it.

Zoe Zenghelis' artistic journey is marked by her innovative paintings that blend metropolitan structures with abstract landscapes, reflecting her Aegean roots and experiences in cities like Paris and New York. As a founding member of OMA, she pushed the boundaries of architectural representation, influencing both projects and teaching methodologies. This monograph, accompanying her first major retrospective, showcases a comprehensive selection of her work from the 1960s to 2020, including studies, sketches, and archival documents that illuminate her creative process.

Life in Tehran proliferates and thrives in its interiors. When public space is policed and controlled, domestic interiors become art galleries, clubs, cultural centers, workshops, and offices. Interiors cease to be the exclusive domain for individual life and family matters; homes become the spaces in which new forms of collective life are experimented and nurtured, and the battleground for social conflicts and political constituencies. Through its extensive apparatus of drawings, Tehran- Life Within Walls presents an archaeological inquiry into the politics and the ecologies of the interior spaces of the Iranian metropolis, from its foundation as the Iranian capital until today. The book is at the same time an accessible entry point for the study of Tehran and Islamic/Iranian architecture, as well as a methodological experiment for the study of contemporary cities. An appendix of six projects provides an imaginative—yet radically pragmatic—vision for the future of Tehran.