- Project: Abra Garden House
- Architect: White Cube Atelier
- Location: Iran, Maku
- Year: 2022
- Area: 100 m2
- Photography: Parham Taghioff
A White Cloud Between Earth and Sky
Suspended between fog and mountain air, Abra Garden House by White Cube Atelier rises like a white cloud in the rugged highlands of Qarah Khach, Maku Free Zone. Designed as a modest retreat from urban intensity, this small garden house redefines how minimal architecture can connect deeply with nature and human perception.
Working within the spatial restrictions imposed on garden plots in the region, the architects turned constraint into poetry — crafting a prototype dwelling that embodies serenity, balance, and a sense of weightless suspension between heaven and earth.
Concept & Inspiration
The project was born from a childhood image of a floating house, a vision that architecturally materialized into a hovering, cubic form resting lightly on the landscape. White Cube Atelier sought to create not only a place of rest but an object of contemplation, a volume that would evoke wonder in those who see or inhabit it.
The architects describe the form as “a white cloud gliding between sky and earth” — both grounded and ethereal. This metaphor captures the dual nature of the project: a structure firmly rooted in its terrain yet visually light and transient in the ever-changing mist of the Maku mountains.
Program & Spatial Organization
Abra Garden House occupies a 6×6-meter platform, evolving vertically through four compact levels:
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Basement: Storage and technical functions discreetly embedded within the ground.
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Living Room: A glazed, open-plan space oriented toward the horizon, fostering connection with the surrounding landscape.
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Resting Space: The private zone, enclosed yet intimate, designed for stillness and retreat.
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Attic & Observation Deck: The final level opens toward the sky, offering panoramic views and direct contact with the mountain air.
This stacked configuration maximizes functionality while maintaining the project’s conceptual purity — a small home with vast spatial experience.
Materiality & Form
The house’s monolithic white envelope establishes a strong visual identity amid the muted tones of its natural surroundings. Its clean geometry and cantilevered edges create a delicate balance of mass and levity, producing the illusion of a structure that hovers just above the landscape.
The restrained palette — white plaster, concrete, and glass — enhances the purity of form. The play of light and shadow across the façade changes with the time of day and the density of fog, transforming the house into a living sculpture within the terrain.
From afar, the building’s simplicity conceals an intricate dialogue between structure and perception, where form becomes both an architectural and emotional experience.
Symbolism & Perception
Beyond its compact plan and minimal footprint, Abra Garden House explores architecture as emotion and encounter. The design aims to bridge the gap between physical space and human imagination — where each observer perceives the house differently, depending on light, weather, and distance.
The architects describe the project as a spatial experiment in empathy: one that challenges viewers to feel architecture rather than merely see it.
This approach situates Abra Garden House within the lineage of phenomenological architecture, where the act of observation becomes integral to the architectural experience itself.
A Prototype for Future Garden Houses
In the Maku Free Zone, where small private plots are regulated by strict building limits, Abra Garden House serves as a prototype model for future garden dwellings. Its compact footprint, sustainable approach, and formal restraint establish a replicable framework for small-scale architecture that remains contextual, poetic, and efficient.
By transforming legal constraints into creative opportunity, White Cube Atelier demonstrates how architecture can remain visionary even within the simplest of means.
Abra Garden House by White Cube Atelier stands as a quiet manifesto for minimalism and meaning in architecture. With its ethereal white volume, compact form, and reflective presence in the misty highlands, it becomes both a shelter and a sculpture, inviting contemplation rather than occupation.
In this small yet profound project, architecture becomes a moment of stillness — a bridge between human imagination, landscape, and the infinite horizon.
