The only Iranian Winner of Agha Khan Award 2022
The Aga Khan Prize is given every three years. This year, among 463 submitted works from 16 countries, Argo Contemporary Art Museum and Cultural Centre, redesigned by Ahmadreza Schricker (ASA North) made it to the final six winners of the award.
Tehran’s first independent contemporary art museum is housed in a more-than-100-year-old former brewery that had been abandoned for decades. The Iranian-Austrian architect’s aim was to create a dialogue between old and new by inserting a new foundation and metal structure to support floating concrete floors and roofs independently of the original exterior walls, thus allowing generous ceiling heights (up to 12 meters) for the climate-controlled galleries. Various spaces for exhibitions, talks, and films were developed over four levels, and a new artist residence was built adjacent to the museum.
All new insertions are curvilinear and employ distinct materials to differentiate them from the brick-built historic fabric: white concrete grand staircase; metal elevator; brass bar; strata of different-toned concrete cladding for the artist-in-residence tower. Echoing neighboring vernacular roofs in form, the five new striated, pitched roof structures act as deep, insulating, filtering skylights and signal that the building is alive again. Former basement brewing pools were converted into sunken galleries.
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