BABA BESKI’S TOMB
Almost everyone in Iran remembers the white-bearded old man that was Baba Beski, aka Dr.Gholamali Beski, always wearing his signature white clothes, speaking passionately about how natural resources are in immediate danger and how humans ought to live a healthier and a more environmental-friendly life. He spent his days in a large natural private garden in the North of Iran, where he hosted his many visitors and friends.
In 2019, he went into a coma after an unfortunate incident, and when the doctors confirmed that he might not live. his family decided to build a structure serving as a shade over the place of his burial in his garden. In his will he wished to be buried simply beneath the ground without a tombstone.
Beski’s immediate family put the the idea forward to make the garden a place of rest, but also a reflection of his ideas. Beski’s body is buried next to the spaces of his everyday living without a tombstone. One might think his body is decaying but he is also growing into the living texture of vegetation that make the garden be. Whatever is born is subject to decay, and whatever decays is the basis for a new reproduction. There is practically no absolute moment of completeness or nothingness, and the intermediate state of incompleteness is the dominant state in the cycle of life. This vicinity of life and death, this entanglement of two seemingly but not necessarily opposite concepts, is what interested the designers.
In the design process the state of incompleteness is embraced as the ultimate state of being. To make it visible, man-made structures and the natural texture of the garden are suspended in an intermingling limbo of incompleteness, between death and life, and therefore insisting on the perpetual cycle of genesis and degeneration.
The tomb of Baba Beski consists of a structure made of woven rebar, conventionally used as the tensile element of reinforced concrete and normally considered unfinished, awaiting its completion. The structure seems unstable at first glance, especially because its two thin standing planes of rebar have an angled position. There is a structural reason behind this Structure: the two planes compensate their lateral forces horizontally, while supporting the top covering vertically. As a result, the footprint of the structure has been minimized to two thin baselines, and its appearance displays instability, incompleteness and spacelessness. Later on, the structure rusts over time and is taken over by climbing plants.
The installation of this tomb was a first step in a larger scenario, that of turning the private garden into a public one for resting and reflection. In the next coming years, the living spaces of Baba Beski will be reborn with the same principles of “incompleteness”, this time as public spaces.
Awards
World Architecture Festival (WAF) | 2021 | short ListedWorld Architecture Festival (WAF) | 2021 | Finalist
WA Awards | 2021 | Winner
Taipei International Design Award (TIDA) | 2020 | Distinction
News
Exploring Creative Uses for Steel RebarsShortlist – Religion Completed Buildings – WAF 2021
Winner – Cycle 37 – WA Awards 2021
ICON Magazine
Distinction – Public Space Design – Taipei International Design Award