FIRM PROFILE

Mr. Mozhan Khadem is President and founding Principal of Boston Design Collaborative. His many years of professional experience include numerous award-winning projects in the United States, Europe, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran. His career includes senior design leadership and Principal positions with prominent U.S. architectural practices such as Perkins and Will in Chicago and Tehran, Mojda Associates in Iran, Payette Associates in Boston, and Anshen & Allen in San Francisco. 

He served as a Principal-in-Charge and design director of many significant projects including the American University in Cairo; the Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey; Jondi Shapour University, Ahwaz, Iran; Alfred and Norma Lerner Tower, Samuel Mather Pavilion at the University Hospitals of Cleveland; University of Miami Medical Center; Sylvester Cancer Clinic; Farahzad (Shahrak e Gharb) master plan and building designs, Teheran, Iran (for 400,000 families); Armed Forces Medical City, Rawalpindi, Pakistan; Jackson Laboratories, New Research Building, Bar Harbor, Maine, he was selected by H.H. The Aga Khan as design consultant for the Aga Khan University and Hospital together with Payette Associates as Healthcare architects. 

Mr. Khadem joined Payette Associates in 1979 as a Principal and Director of Design and led this project in design and construction in Khadem Studio of Payette Associates. Mozhan Khadem has led large and complicated projects involving complex master planning, programming, and architecture. His work has been noted for its culturally and environmentally responsive design. Mr. Khadem’s architectural practice is profoundly influenced and inspired by his philosophy. Particularly that architecture is the outward expression of the inner reality of all physical and social phenomena.

The Design Philosophy of Continuous Architecture

Architecture is the outward expression of the inner reality of all physical and social phenomena. Architecture is the skin. The inner reality is the “truth” or the hidden “beauty” that is covered by the skin. The life challenge of human beings is to discover the inner reality of things that are the object of their quest and present them to all for their edification. Great works including great architecture are born when the author is so skilled that he/she can render the skin or the outward appearance of a phenomenon so transparent that its inner reality or its true beauty can shine through. It is therefore the “shining through of the inner beauty” from behind the veil or the skin of the appearance that defines all great works of art and science. Such encounters with “beauty” in art, literature, music, and science constitute rare moments of pure joy that make our human life meaningful, sublime and exulted.

The Inner Reality

The inner reality of each phenomenon is endowed with a unique “sense of place”, “sense of time”, and “continuity and wholeness” “Unique sense of place “means that the inner reality of a phenomenon is specific to its geographic place and its environmental and sociocultural condition. “Sense of time” means that the inner reality of a phenomenon is forever in the process of “becoming”, that at each point in time it represents its entire history as well as its anticipated future unfolding. It is therefore a link between the past and the future. “Sense of Continuity and wholeness” means that the inner reality of a phenomenon is whole and that all its parts are connected in a continuous, dynamic, and unsegmented manner to each other. For example, the inner reality of a tree consists of the potentialities of its seed and a multitude of factors like the soil, light, water, wind, etc., affecting its growth. All of which are unique, time- related and on the continuous process of becoming.

The Outer Appearance

The physical architectural appearance or the skin that covers the inner reality of each phenomenon likewise has a “unique sense of place”, “sense of time” and is endowed with the quality of “continuity and wholeness”. For example, any existing tree in nature is unique because it is cultivated in a specific place under specific temporal and environmental conditions. At each point in time, it represents the entire history of its past development and points to its anticipated future growth during succeeding seasons. All its member branches, leaves and fruits are part of the continuous architecture of its physical appearance. Likewise, the human body is the outward expression or the “architecture” of its inner reality. Since the inner reality of each human person as well as each natural phenomenon is unique, time-related, and continuous, its outward expression or its “architecture” is also unique, time- related, and continuous.

The Architecture of Social Institutions

Mozhan Khadem believes that the architecture of all social enterprises such as educational, health, cultural, residential, and commercial institutions should also reflect the same qualities of the unique “sense of place”, “sense of time” and “sense of continuity” that the architecture of the physical phenomena reflects.

The Summary

All of Mozhan Khadem’s architectural designs respond to the unique requirements of the user and the geographic location where it is located. His design philosophy has won him many international recognition and awards. He has won many significant design competitions and commissions including the design competition for the Koc university in Istanbul, the American university replacement facility in Cairo and the Aga Khan university in Karachi each containing about 3,000,000 square feet of space for 10,000 student enrollments.

In modern times, the majority of architectural programs are executed as “objects in space“ without a sense of place and historic memory or a sense of unsegmented architectural continuity. On the contrary Mozhan Khadem’s architectural projects are designed with a unique sense of place, historic memory, and unsegmented continuity of all its architectural parts in a way that the entire architectural fabric becomes continuous wherein the voids or courtyards that surround the observer, not solids or “object buildings” that stand apart from him/her become important.

Therefore, in his projects, the entire architectural composition is continuous and literally merges from the vastness of the site and is integrated with the surrounding natural landscape. Their architectonic value is that of the continuous interior spaces that surround the observer, not isolated building or buildings that stand apart from him/her.

In this kind of planning Mozhan has been able to incorporate the diverse physical requirements of the project into an organic whole and represent them through the identification of appropriate entrance portals, fountains, changes of levels and vistas. The beholder, therefore, is not aware of the exterior of any particular edifice. His architectural experience consists of his entry through a series of magnificent portals and the interlocking procession of the interior courtyards and spaces.

The sequence of spaces is not simply a series of mechanically laid out courtyards connected with links -a fallacy that has led to many abortive architectural examples in the east and the west- it is rather a procession of a variety of enclosures with differing scale, proportion, and function. This diversity of treatment evokes moods of meditation, interaction, privacy, repose, and motion. The manner of transition between voids and courts is most significant.

These spaces of transition are handled with supreme artistry. Each provides for a different function which psychologically prepares the observer for the succeeding architectural event. Each has its appropriate entrance portal that partially or completely conceals the full impact of the magnificent court behind it.

As these delightful courtyards unfold in a rhythmic and hierarchical sequence before the bedazzled eye of the beholder, he/she gains a profound artistic experience that cannot be attributed to any singular architectural episode or any specified point in time. The experience is derived from the whole of the complex while observed in a state of motion. This is truly kinetic and dynamic architecture. This is the significant and organic principle behind the idea of continuous architecture. It would be marvelous indeed to bring modern technology to the service of such an idea.