At the edge of Tehran in Kuhsar, a weekend villa has been turned into a permanent home by building outward instead of tearing down and starting over. ZAV Architects kept the original orthogonal house, designed by Firouz Firouz, and extended the roughly 200-square-meter structure into three neighboring plots through a sequence of overlapping vaulted rooms set between existing fruit trees.
The original volume still reads as the center of the home, with terracotta-toned walls anchoring the composition. From there, the addition shifts into curved shells that slip past each other, creating a connected run of rooms with changing heights and proportions. Thin gaps between the vaults bring in cuts of light, and the newer spaces pull daylight through skylights and tall windows. The interior stays visually continuous, even as each vaulted segment feels distinct.
Color plays a key role in making the expansion legible. Warmer tones stay closer to the original house, while the newer rooms move through paler pinks and into blues. Instead of reading as a hard break between old and new, the gradual shift turns the exterior and interior surfaces into a timeline of growth.
For mason contractors, the headline is that the project’s unusual forms are still executed with low-tech masonry and local craftsmanship. ZAV describes the work as a graft, and that idea carries practical lessons for additions in tight, constraint-driven sites: keep the existing structure clear, let new work follow the available openings in the landscape, and use repeatable geometric rules so future phases can connect without looking like an afterthought.
Gelareh House also speaks to a bigger trend on Tehran’s metropolitan fringe, where weekend properties are becoming full-time homes and pressure on productive land is rising. Here, the orchard remains, and the house adapts around it.
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