ShinAbad Memorial
- Project: Memorial to the Victims of School Fire Disasters
- Architect: Farzan Shamasblou
- Project Type: Monument/Memorial
- Area: 615 m²
- Client: Institute of Iranian Ethics and Thought
- Location: Tehran, IRAN.
- Status: Competition Proposal - 2nd Place Winner
- Design Year: 2014
Theoretical View
The “Memorial to Victims of School Fire Disasters” project is a representation of a circumstance that neither implies the beautiful nor the sublime matter. To put it simply, the project could be interpreted as the design of a monument devoid of monumentalism. “burning for nothing!” may be a suitable interpretation. Hence, “glory” can take this memorial away from its bitter but real content and prompt the viewer solely to admire the aesthetic characteristics and the sense of pride due to the glorification of “achievements” and “symbolic values”, which are rooted in a conservative outlook, rather than thinking, as history demonstrates this statement concerning a massive portion of the built monuments. The theme for this project is a warning quality, not an encouraging one, and its architecture has to be committed to its theme. The representation of “nothingness” (in an unknown place of cause or effect), the generation of a sense of Deja Vu (a feeling of having already experienced the present situation), and the reference of the mind to thinking about forgotten adventure are among the objectives of the project ahead. Through a phenomenological approach, the provided project initially attempted to gather “things” for realizing the notion of “remembering”, “thinking in the past”, and perhaps “outlining a future on the basis of past critiques”; i.e., the meaningful things in essence whose direct meaning does not lie in multiple subjective interpretations.
Drawings and Diagrams
Design Approach
Through a phenomenological approach, the provided project initially attempted to gather “things” for realizing the notion of “remembering”, “thinking in the past”, and perhaps “outlining a future on the basis of past critiques”; i.e., the meaningful things in essence whose direct meaning does not lie in multiple subjective interpretations. The process of design purely contains the collection and juxtaposition of elements, which reflect the above-listed themes to some extent, yet viewing the place without preconception, which arises from the assembly of these components. However, in the opinion of the designer, the general place that has ultimately emerged and been portrayed from the juxtaposition of these things, if there is something, is nothing but a built ruin that has illustrated the shadow of the past on the ground of a new-built texture (Chitgar Complex)! i.e., a process in accordance with the self-destructiveness of the phenomenological view at the place in architecture and the generation of a critical object through it. Because the design approach has been to refer to objects, those components are merely addressed in the project scenario that does not concentrate on subjective and personal interpretations, but the viewer objectively sees them.
Physical Model
