Presentation of the master plan and conceptual architectural design of Shahrak e Gharb to the King and Queen of Iran, President Jacques Chirac of France and his wife, and the senior cabinet ministers of Iran.
Iran Zamin School

Shahrak e Gharb, Tehran, Iran

The Project

Aside from the many architectural commissions that in the early 1970s, Mozhan Khadem had received, from Iran, one of the main reasons he left Chicago for Tehran and established initially the office of, which was subsequently changed to Daz, Mozhda (Mojda) and finally to Mozhda (Mojda) and associates, was the commission he received for the master plan and architectural design for Shahrak e Gharb. The commission included the design of a city for 400,000 families with all related commercial, cultural and technical facilities. The facility was sponsored by Pahlavi Foundation and was scheduled to be designed and built within four years. An ambitious and somewhat unrealistic schedule. It was one of the pet projects of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Mozhan brought a special team of architects from the office of Perkins and Will in Chicago to accelerate the design of this significant project,

Mozhan initially tried to hire Sasaki Associates via his friend Morgan Wheelock of Sasaki, but when that did not work out he hired Carol Johnson landscape architects of Boston, MA. as consultants for the design of landscaping and green spaces for the project. The design concept of the project was based on a weave of low-rise buildings recalling the “continuous architectural weave of historic Iranian cities like Isfahan, Kashan, and Yazd, with occasional high-rise towers.

The project was presented to Mohammad Reza Shah the King and Farah pahlavi the queen of Iran in the presence of cabinet ministers and the president of France, Jacque Shirak, and his wife.

The project was hardly under construction when the regime changed to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Shortly before and after the Iranian revolution, the high-density low-rise design proposed by Mozhan Khadem was abandoned and was substituted with numerous high-rise towers. Following are some of the projects that were designed and built-in Shahrak e Gharb by Mozhan’s office (Mojda and associates) before the Iranian Islamic revolution.

STAFF BY PROJECT:

  • Mozhan Khadem, Principal in Charge
  • Ken Kruthers, Project Designer,
  • Richard Golombeck, Administrator
  • Harry Layman, Technical Director
  • Darush Maani, Project Assistant
  • Nader Haydarian, Project Assistant

Mozhan Khadem was asked by the director of the Shahrake Gharb project to design a facility for the Iran Zamin school. Attached are the sketches Mozhan presented for this design. This facility was quickly built. It was one of the few small projects that were built on this site before the Iranian Islamic revolution.

STAFF BY PROJECT:

  • Mozhan Khadem, Principal in Charge
  • Kenneth Kruthers, Project Designer

The Bazarche for the phase one project of the Shahrake Gharb was another project designed and built by the office of Mozhan Khadem, Mojda, and associates before the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

STAFF BY PROJECT:

  • Mozhan Khadem, Principal in charge
  • Farhad Razi, Project designer 
  • Lalique, Project designer
PORTFOLIO

Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey

April 8, 2022

In 1991 the Koc Family, one of the most prominent families in Turkey, decided to build a private university in that country. They conducted a search for finding an architect who could respond to their objectives. They decided to conduct an architectural competition between three architectural offices: Khadem Design Studio at Payette in Boston, MA, Architects Collaborative in Boston, MA, and Ove Arup in London, England.

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American University, Cairo

April 8, 2022

The American University in Cairo (AUC) was designed to relocate its main campus from El Tahrir Square, in the heart of the city, to the planned community of New Cairo, where the university would be one of the largest landowners and employers. The built area of the campus comprised some 300,000 square meters, set on a 260-acre site, with an estimated budget of substantially over $400mil for construction. At the time of the initiation of this project, AUC occupied 100,000 square meters of owned and rented space on approximately 7 acres in several locations in downtown Cairo. AUC’s new campus is located some 35 kilometers to the east of downtown Cairo in the planned community of New Cairo, a development with a projected population of 2 to 3 million people in a desert characterized by petrified forest remnants.

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Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan

April 14, 2022

After a long international search, In 1971, H.H. The Aga Khan selected Mozhan Khadem as the Design Consultant for the Aga Khan University in Karachi and Payette Associates as the technical hospital consultant. As the design leader, Mozhan Khadem conceptualized the Aga Khan University and hospital as “the architecture of continuous interior spaces that surrounds the observer”– consistent with the tradition of Indo-Persian and Mughal architectural heritage of Pakistan. In order to familiarize the architectural and engineering design teams, with the blessing of the Aga Khan, Mozhan organized a tour of over one-month duration through countries under Islamic influence, including Spain in Europe; Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt in North Africa; and Iran, Pakistan, and India in Asia, where the design team could become familiar with the important historic architectural monuments in Islamic countries and could understand the basic architectural concept Mozhan Khadem was advocating for in the design of the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan.

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