Tehran-based ZAV Architects -founded in 2007-, thrive to redefine the function of their practice beyond pre-defined limits of its influence to having socio-political and economico-cultural agency. They believe architecture can be evaluated in terms of its capacity for maximizing the balanced production and distribution of economic gain for its stakeholders.

In their work they attempt to postpone architectural presumptions in order to create space for critical re-evaluation of assets, techniques and spatial diagrams. As demonstrated in their various projects, it is through the application of architecture’s very own means that they attempt to exercise agency in matters that fall exterior to its core, in order to entertain the maximum negotiation with the shaping forces and production of alternative architectural products.

In the Middle-East the ‘west’ as a cultural phenomenon was mostly adopted uncritically. With the formal adaptation of modern architecture, inherently construction techniques, technologies and products were adopted and are now being acquired in return for wasteful cashing out of natural resources of the region, mostly gas and oil. ZAV’s alternative is absorbing the underlying principles of western modernity, while re-appropriating one’s own cultural circumstances. In this process, materials and construction techniques are re-invented, recycled or up-cycled. As new forms and material conditions emerge built environment becomes the result of re-appropriation of what we already have in terms of material as tangible asset or their cultural practices.