Rouhafza Villa

When we arrived at this project in the village of Rouhafza in Damavand, the work had been left half finished. On a site of more than 3,000 m² stood a white-cement building with a modern façade: crisp and clean, but cold. It looked as if it had been built somewhere else and set down here, among the mountain, the trees and the sound of the river. Our job was to reconcile the two.

We walked the rest of the way beside the owner, from construction through finishing to final handover. Not a single detail was chosen from catalogues or copied from other villas. Every decision started from his own needs and took shape for this house alone.

The land sloped steeply, and the simple answer was stairs. But on weekends this garden also hosts the owner's parents, and we wanted walking through it to be just as easy and pleasant for them. So we drew a curving path that climbs gently through the orchard beds without a single step. Wherever the path pauses for breath, there is a small plaza. In one of them sits an olive tree several centuries old, a bonsai that came here from somewhere else and now looks as if it has always been here. We planted its younger sister in the bed facing the ground-floor bedroom, so it is the first thing seen from the window each morning.

The garden has two gates, one from the upper lane and one from the lower, a full storey apart in height. The parking enters from the lower gate and sits below the level of the grounds and the pool. We built its roof with a steel frame and kept it low enough not to take the mountain view from the villa. On this roof a 250 m² deck took shape, reachable both from the garden and from beside the pool. We planted around it: cypress and jasmine, ornamental shrubs and a few kitchen-herb beds, because a home should smell of life too. By day it is the children's playground, and by night a place to sit and settle, facing the mountain, with the sound of the river passing close by.

Beside the house sits the pool, with plant and filtration rooms doing their work out of sight.

We also planned for snowy days, so time in the garden would not be limited to the warm season. We built a heated glass pavilion where you can sit and watch the snow fall on the garden. Its roof opens too; on nights when they feel like it, they slide it back so the village's starry sky is overhead and, further down, the lights of Rouhafza come on one by one.

And water, which is everywhere in this garden: a fountain with a seating area beside it, and a wall that water slides gently down. From there a narrow channel sets off and runs to the far end of the pavilion. Its water is always moving and never still, like life itself in this garden.