An architectural guide to imagination | Yaser Mousapour | TEDxOmidSalon

26 Aug 2024 (21 days ago)

The Power of Imagination in Architecture

Yaser Mousapour believes architecture reflects a learned helplessness and lacks imagination and aspiration.
Mousapour argues that imagination is a valuable human asset, enabling the creation of possibilities and shaping history.
Mousapour suggests that architecture, despite its limited scale, has the potential to offer alternative realities and perspectives.
Yaser Mousapour believes architecture, unlike building construction, rejects realities to imagine other realities.
The speaker believes in the importance of architecture and imagination, encouraging others to envision new realities through architecture.

The combination of existing realities, like a lecture hall and a street, creates a surprising and imaginative experience, similar to Picasso's use of bicycle parts in his art and the Safavid architects' placement of a divided kiosk within the Khaju Bridge.
A restaurant named Hamhava was designed to feel like an extension of the sidewalk, blurring the boundary between inside and outside.
The restaurant featured a mirror at the end of the space to create the illusion of another street continuing beyond.
In an office design, the concept of windows was reimagined to provide everyone access to light and a view, addressing the limited availability of traditional window placements.
A project called Mega Window was created where windows, instead of being flat panes of glass, branch out in tunnels towards the center of the space.
Within each tunnel's stem, new windows are born, providing each person with their own dedicated window alongside their workspace.

Near Naqsh-e Jahan Square, the owner of a carpet store wanted to add modern elements to his shop due to sanctions and a lack of tourism.
Yaser Mousapour designed a minimalist and modern space using carpets as columns.
The construction process was challenging because the client, Haj Agha, couldn't see the progress until the carpets were hung.
Haj Agha referred to the carpet columns as "carpet columns," the same name Mousapour used, and had specific ideas about their appearance.
A project with colorful and patterned exterior columns and a minimalist white interior was completed. A street musician played music inside the project on its first day.

In Ramsar, a project involving seven cabins in a linear forest near the Ramsar cable car was proposed. The client wanted to enclose the cabins with a fence and rent them out to visitors.
To avoid restricting access to the forest and beach, a different approach was imagined. This involved a "Morab bridge" facing the beach, with the cabins relocated and connected by cranes. This would allow residents to live in isolation while visitors could still enjoy the beach and walk through the bridge.

People were asked to imagine new possibilities for apartments, moving beyond the repetitive nature of modern apartments.
One idea involved creating an apartment building with separate space-time zones, similar to previous projects that juxtaposed different realities.
This apartment building would feature a pedestrian pathway with various moments and experiences, including spaces for activities like basketball and outdoor rooms with flowing air.

A competition-winning project was being constructed, and a table used during its development caught the speaker's attention.
The table, used for negotiations, displayed pedestrian pathways and a private room within a forest, striking the speaker as a tangible representation of imagination.