Interview with Peyman Kiani Falavarjani

Peyman Kiani Falavarjani ("PKF") interviewed on Saturday, 26 December.

Could you please tell us about your experience as a designer, artist, architect or creator?

PKF : I started studying architecture at university 16 years ago, and while I was studying, I became an intern at one of their projects at Polsheer. In the same years, I started designing and producing furniture, coffee table, bookshelves, and TV desks. After a while, we got into interior design and execution by a small team that I had gathered as a student. I went to Malaysia and first studied urban design in my master's degree and left it and resumed architecture. Then I returned to Iran and continued my work focusing on the design of hotels and restaurants and bars.

How did you become a designer?

PKF : I have loved knowing details since I was a child. I would open all my toys to see how they were made and how these pieces and details work together to create a single function. During school, I loved solving mathematical equations and drawing mathematical formulas. At the age of 11, I was also involuntarily attracted to half-finished buildings, and if a building was being built near us, I would follow its progress every day. I was very attracted to construction machinery. In the meantime, little by little, the details used in nature blurred my attention, which made me follow the genre of macro nature photography as a teenager. I was and am a very curious person. During my studies, I tried to understand nature more consciously and use it in my work. In the second year of university, I came up with the idea of a bean sprout and its growth movement, to design in the universal jumping style of the Faculty of Architecture, and I could get full score. How much importance is given to design and formulation in nature with unparalleled proportions and colors, gives me a double motivation to go as deep as possible in the path of design. According to the first human encounter with any object, building, space, or environment through the eyes and the sense of sight, I think appearance is the most important influential part in relation to anything.

What are your priorities, technique and style when designing?

PKF : The first point when facing a new project is to know it completely. This knowledge includes the type of use, the study of the culture, climate, history, natural infrastructure, and architecture of the area and the needs of the project and the demands of the employer. And most of all, let the project itself tell us which way to go. By spending hours on the project site and visualizing the space, we basically achieve it. We try to use every tool that can make us do better. We have even made a mock-up of a project with clay due to its complex size. And there have been projects that we have worked with VR technology.

Which emotions do you feel when designing?

PKF : The best part of the design is the idea generation phase. Of course, I must say that the most complicated part is this stage. In ideation, you will enter into another world, Something like meditation. You think of nothing but a subject. It is a matter of beauty, proportions, color, and form. Of course, one should not neglect the joy of finishing work and the final output. Even the present moment of the design has a unique atmosphere. But in any case, in the space of ideation, the laws of time and space reach zero and the mind takes you to your goal by flying. It is a sense of lightness, timelessness, and placelessness that many people do not experience.

What particular aspects of your background shaped you as a designer?

PKF : Honestly, during school and high school, I had to work in my father's industrial factory during the summer holidays. It certainly could not have been a more enjoyable vacation for a teenager. But in order to gain skills in industrial work and snakes with heavy industrial machines, today all those skills and knowledge of materials and execution of details have been used a lot in my design path. If we design a project, it will definitely be the executive, and I attend project construction meetings and suggest appropriate implementation ideas to the project. Another skill that helped me a lot in the design path is photography. I am also very interested in it and it also opens my eyes to my surroundings and makes me look more closely at my surroundings. The details, the frames, and the combination of colors in nature have always had the greatest impact on me. And that I think I am at the beginning of the road and far from my ideals.

What is your growth path? What are your future plans? What is your dream design project?

PKF : The concept of a complex with the idea of wavy patterns thrown by the wind on the beach sand is a project that I am very interested in building on one of the tourist beaches of the world. This project consists of 7 towers. Its design style is parametric. These 7 towers, which vary from 11 floors to 21 floors, are discrete in structure and continuous in shell, and together provide an integrated wind. All the plans of this tower are on different floors and there is no type of plan in this work.

What are your advices to designers who are at the beginning of their career?

PKF : Young designers need to know that if they have ideas that go unnoticed, it does not mean that they are weak. Continuing in the career path they have chosen is more important than talent. Early in their careers, they have to work with a lot of excitement and motivation to be involved in executive projects to gain experience. Never be afraid of not understanding or making a mistake. Try to ask anything that is vague to them without embarrassment.

You are truly successful as a designer, what do you suggest to fellow designers, artists and architects?

PKF : To answer this question, we must first examine the meaning of success. I am still learning and pursuing experienced designers. But if I have any advice so far, it is the designers' more knowledge of nature and its preservation. The way designers pay attention to nature is different from ordinary people. They pay attention to proportions, formatting, change and reproduction, coloring, and so on. Ordinary people enjoy nature, but designers learn.

What is your day to day look like?

PKF : Usually, after waking up in the morning, I stay in bed for half an hour, looking out the window and thinking about the great day ahead. I meditate a bit, taking a look at the notifications of the design and monitoring groups. I take a warm shower and go to the back of the table. I check all my messages and emails and reply one by one. Then I review the programs I have written in TimeTable since the day before and do them according to priority. The most enjoyable part of the day is visiting projects and brainstorming a new concept. And we are in touch with projects and supervisors until about 9 pm, and with 3D and design teams until about 2 am. At the end of the night in bed before reading a book or watching a movie is almost a fixed program. After reading the book, meditating, and reviewing the great events of the day I had, I fall asleep.

How do you keep up with latest design trends? To what extent do design trends matter?

PKF : We are aware of the trend by studying and seeing the latest projects in the world. But we never made the design space trendy or fashionable. In my opinion, dependence on fashion or even the use of materials used by most designers can only visually reduce the life of a project. When a design goes out of fashion, it is no longer beautiful to anyone. So we always go to the source of the idea, nature. We use nature in the plan, object, lighting, coloring, facade, and whatever we can. We recently designed a tropical garden for a five-star hotel on Kish Island, the idea of which was inspired by the twisting of shapes on corals.

How do you know if a product or project is well designed? How do you define good design?

PKF : Technically, the project or product in my opinion is well designed that all the parameters of proportions, color, use of appropriate materials and practicality are observed. But the mechanism of the human brain is very intelligent. The human brain is a skilled engineer, regardless of the interests, talents, or disciplines that each individual pursues. Our brain can tell if proportions are observed in an effect. Our brain has the power to recognize the right color. Our brain has a high ability to recognize beauty. Therefore, before technical inspections by experts, if you are in front of a product and a project and its beauty fades, you should know that the product or project has been working with quality and it can be said that it has had a successful design. The human brain examines millions of parameters in what you are seeing in a matter of seconds, and if it is up to its own standards, it follows it further, in which case you have lost its effect.

How do you decide if your design is ready?

PKF : When an output excites our design. This is exactly the moment that we have to deal with the design process very strictly and impartially. No one in our group is allowed to praise something that looks good. The design process must go so far as not to get tired of seeing it ourselves. Then we can say that this work is almost ready.

What is your biggest design work?

PKF : Next work. We will focus all our experiences, worldviews, and studies on the next work. A new project has always been very attractive to us. Everything we have done before is also valuable to us. But the next job is like a new hope in the future.

Who is your favourite designer?

PKF : I try to follow most designers and enjoy and learn from their new work. But my favorite designers are Sanjay Puri, Zaha Hadid, and Frank Gehry. If I want to talk to a deceased designer, it's Zaha Hadid. Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry have had a great impact on the formation of contemporary and future design.

Would you tell us a bit about your lifestyle and culture?

PKF : I try to enjoy every moment of life. I enjoy drawing and listening to my favorite music the most. In general, I feel that there was no creativity before music. I have always tried to make the most of the culture, history, nature and climate of the project location in my designs. But I also use the materials and skills that are my architectural heritage and culture of my projects. We are currently designing a 5-star hotel. If a community is design-friendly in its day-to-day encounters with high-quality products and buildings and spaces, its people will certainly have a better behavioral balance. The main part of our comprehensive study is psychology. The greatest impact this discipline has had on my life is looking at and recognizing the beauties around me and the universe. In order to be a creator of beauty, I must first know beauty. What better chance than to have to study and visit the beauties of the world to progress on the career? whether man-made beauties or beauties of nature.

Would you tell us more about your work culture and business philosophy?

PKF : Primarily love. We are a team working together (before Corona, of course). At present, we do our work online and short sessions remotely. Every year, many people ask us to join our team. In this regard, we take some tests from them. There are challenges in all the tests that will not continue if they do not love it. Architecture is as delicate and enjoyable as it is for those who love it, it is also a harsh discipline for those who just want to do it and do not love it. In my opinion, the biggest responsibility of any individual or design team is to provide the best quality. If he does not reach the desired result, he should not present it. There is a perfect design of nature around us that we will destroy with human handiwork if we do not do it right.

What are your philanthropic contributions to society as a designer, artist and architect?

PKF : I always help in the growth path. And I strongly believe in the philosophy of growth. We help charities that help children and teens develop their talents. And I personally give the opportunity to interest and passionate students who need guidance and experience to be with us as interns or answer their questions patiently and completely and guide them as much as I can.

What positive experiences you had when you attend the A’ Design Award?

PKF : In my opinion, participating in such prestigious competitions can motivate designers a lot. I believe that we need to judge through experts and take part in such a challenge globally so that we can realize that we are on the right path of thinking and skill. Also, after receiving the award, we gained more credibility in the community and among our colleagues. Our employers were also impressed by these awards and today they have more confidence in us. I am very happy that my designs were considered by the judges and I hope that in the near future I can do something that promotes design thinking in the world and is effective in the lifestyle of the people of the world.

Peyman Kiani Falavarjani Profile