Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s Childhood Home

The Jalal house museum depicts the early life of the Iranian novelist, short-story writer, translator, philosopher and socio-political critic Jalal Al-e Ahmad in his childhood house, in District 12 of Tehran, next to the Grand Bazaar. Our design approach is inspired by Jalal’s writing style and his sociopolitical view of the world. Jalal wrote in an honest, proactive and precise way, removing prepositions, compounds and metaphors to keep only the essence of his prose. His writing was committed to social change and equity, and his ethnography brings light to the everyday life of Iranians in his era.

Jalal was a maker himself and created furniture from wood and metal. Inspired by his resourceful approach to writing and making, the display cases are designed in a modular form, for simplicity and clarity, to exhibit handwritten notes and personal belongings of Jalal and his family. The museum’s artworks form a continuous collage narrating his childhood, adolescence, youth and some of his ethnographic research.

The collage will depict the calligraphy of Haj Ahmad, Jalal’s father, Jalal’s handwritten notes and photographs, and the history of the house through maps of the neighborhood, showing how it was part of the oldest part of Tehran. A few workshops with neighborhood residents are planned to shape the format of the collages.