Yellowknife architect wins national award for house
Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Feb 14/01) - "The business of architecture is to establish emotional relationships by means of raw materials." French architect Le Courbusier said this.
Yellowknife award winning architect Kayhan Nadji quotes him to explain the idea behind his award-winning home at Niven Lake.
Idea. Earth, sky, fire. Stone, glass, wood.
He used and built a house.
It sits in the Niven Lake subdivision surrounded by houses with big garages.
It doesn't have square corners. The house is round, peaking in a glass dome. At night with the lights on it gleams 360 degrees; Old Town, Niven Lake, Tin Can Hill, Franklin Ave.
On January 25, in Toronto, Kayhan Nadji received a national design award for his house. The award -- best built environmental-small structure from Design Exchange-National Post -- was presented during a glittering gala downtown.
This is not his first award. Nadji's house has appeared in the pages of various architecture magazines and he was named one of the century's top 2,000 artists and designers by the Biographical Society in Cambridge, England.
Fuse a scientist and an artist you get an architect.
Aesthetics and functionality
Nadji fashioned the railings on his spiral staircase from wooden closet rods. He split them length-wise and soaked them in water until he could bend the perfect curve. Joining them end on end he bolted them to the wall.
Wood, water and hand
The house stands on three round beams and six columns around the outside wall leaving the middle space open.
Standing on the main floor of the three story house you can look up through the domed sky-light.
From the top floor you can look back down. All rooms revolve around this empty centre.
The woodstove sits dead centre on the main floor. The chimney rises straight through the skylight.
On the main floor, following the interior's circumference clockwise, a small sitting room flows into the kitchen, flows into the dining room, flows into the livingroom and back to the entrance.
The second floor is lined with bedrooms and on the third floor is Nadji's library, lined with books, Iranian mats and cushions.
Up here the skylight dome is huge.
It took him two years of planning, three other models and eight months of construction to finish the building, but the concept took a lifetime.
The circle, with fire at its centre, the open spaces that blur the line between interior and exterior, are influences and ideas incorporated from Northern aboriginal culture and their solutions to living on a harsh landscape and climate.
"The conical shape is most respected among Dene," said the Iranian born Nadji, "it gives spiritual power.
"I made the conical shape as a skylight to accentuate the cultural aspects of the relationship between earth and sky," said Nadji.
Nadji believes unity is the ground of architecture. An idea rooted in the Baha'i faith. And from this he built a house.
Unity in diversity
"The idea came a long time ago," he said.
"I wanted to bring together Inuit and Dene culture and create something functional that meets the requirements of the North but still respects the culture," said Nadji.
Cultural traits do not exist in vacuums. They're extensions of environment. Behind the myth is a practical reason for things.
According to Nadji circular structures adapt best to the Northern climate.
"The circular form gives least resistance to the wind," said Nadji.
"With less resistance there is lower snow deposits or snowdrifts," he said.
And it logically follows with less wind resistance, less energy is needed for heating.
"You don't need much energy to fight with energy from outside," he said.
More economical
The circle is also more economical than the square.
"A square and circle can have the same area but the proportions between the parameter is different, the circle's is less," he said.
"You don't need as much material to build the walls," said Nadji.
"Basically I wanted to respect (Northern aboriginal) culture and make it functional," said Nadji, "I think I have done that."
"I believe that architecture is not just about dimensions but about relationships with human beings," he said.
"My message is to respect and understand culture," he said.
"My goal is to bring it to reality."
And to this the house rises, a slow revolution that ends in glass, a filter for sky.
