Excerpt: Inner Garden Villa is a residence designed by the architectural firm 123DV Modern Villa. Located in Tehran, this 1400 m2 high-end freestanding villa is built against the mountainside, with a garden raised 17 meters above street level. The facade is cladded with natural travertine stone: a famous high-quality local product collected from the Iranian mountains. The wish of the owners to park their cars underground resulted in a 20-meter-long tunnel below the garden, leading directly to parking underneath the villa.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by Architect] Located in Tehran, this 1400 m2 high-end freestanding villa is built against the mountainside, with a garden raised 17 meters above street level. The facade is cladded with natural travertine stone: a famous high-quality local product collected from the Iranian mountains. The wish of the owners to park their cars underground resulted in a 20-meter-long tunnel below the garden, leading directly to parking underneath the villa.

The villa has two underground floors and two floors above ground. The lowest floor is at the southern street level, with a tunnel leading to the parking garage. Visitors enter the villa via stairs or elevator and a walk through the garden.

Inspired by traditional Persian architecture – mainly the configuration of courtyard houses and their microclimatic effect – a glazing inner garden with a retractable roof is positioned in the core of the villa, providing the building with enough daylight and fresh air on every floor. The glass panes surrounding the inner garden ensure sufficient natural light enters the swimming pool area on the first level.


A second insulated sliding roof protects the house from hot summers when temperatures reach 40 degrees Celsius. Like the courtyard houses, the inner garden is an intimate private space with a pleasant micro-climate.


During the design development, purity and hygiene were central themes incorporated into the interior architecture. The concept facilitates cleaning and ensures a fixed sequence of successive spaces in the wellness area (entering a corridor, then a changing room, then entering the showers) before entering the swimming pool. The unique lighting makes the ceiling above the pool look like a sparkling starry sky.