Negin Shahr Ayandeh (NESHA) is an architecture, planning and management consultancy firm, founded in 2001, that provides diverse yet integrated services to solve multidisciplinary problems in all scales: from urban areas to buildings. In 2018, after the firm witnessed an exponential growth, its founding partners, who are architects themselves, decided to design and build a new headquarters building. Considering the high cost of land and construction in Tehran, they chose a 50-year-old, three-storey building to renovate. 

The design process faced various challenges, but the main challenge was to incorporate the needs and requirements of all three partners, as well as different necessities stemming from the multidisciplinary nature of NESHA and its clients. The designers had to accommodate various functions within a limited space and budget. To achieve this purpose, the designers employed design-build method and iteration of prototype making and using second-hand materials.  

The ground floor, is mainly allocated to the Future City Innovation Lab, which is a subsidiary of NESHA with a relatively different face and identity and in need of a different design with flexible spaces and transformability as its main tenets. Recycling and rational economy were the other design aspects of the ground floor. This floor also includes a kitchen with access to a small backyard used as the canteen.  

The first floor was turned into the studio, a space dedicated to the possibility of individual- and team-work. Two opposite values were considered in designing the studio: on one hand, teamwork mentality and interactions between two or more people, and on the other hand, providing individual privacy that is the prerequisite of a creative workplace. 

The second floor comprises the office management area, a transparent meeting room with two glass walls (symbolizing the transparency in decision-making processes in NESHA), accounting and finance department, and the chief managers’ offices. Parts of the original building were retrofitted, which made sections of the original brick façade become exhibited as they were, without any modifications, along with new-fashioned materials in an unexpected arrangement. Hence, the bricks in parts of the wall and most of the rough arch are revealed from under their old cover and are reinforced with framed metal networks.