what we do

Studio Chahar is an interdisciplinary architecture and research practice working across cultural and museum architecture, adaptive reuse and preservation, environmentally responsive design, and community-based projects. Rather than treating local tradition as a form to imitate, we study the systems already embedded in a place, including climate, material, craft, water, ecology, labor, and memory, and ask how those systems can inform contemporary architecture.

Our services span pre-design research, conceptual design, design development, and construction administration, at scales ranging from a single structure to the design of restoration itself, where planting and terrain become an architectural act.

our story

Studio Chahar is a nomadic architecture and research practice, founded by Yasaman Esmaili in 2018 as a platform for design thinking and making. We focus on projects that transform the built environment in an equitable and innovative way, working across Iran, the United States, and other international contexts, while building awareness of a project's footprint on both the urban and natural environment.

Chahar means "four" in Farsi and runs through Iranian architectural language: chaharsoo is the center of the bazaar, where knowledge and expertise are exchanged and the energy of the city meets, greets, and flows. Chaharbagh is the Persian garden, its four directions meeting equally at a single center.

That is also how we understand our role on a project. We bring together designers, artists, community members, historians, and scientists, treating architecture as much a form of facilitation as a form of building, the same fluidity and exchange that gathers at the center of the bazaar.

info@studiochahar.com