Benetton Epicenters
Program: Retail, Office
Size: 12000 m²
Client: United Colors Of Benetton
Collaborators: DC4S
Location: Tehran, Iran
Status: Competition
Year: January 2009
This project is not merely about designing two headquarters for Benetton in Tehran. It is also about designing an inclusive strategy on how Benetton can act and surpass in a totally new and talented market. The key to Benetton’s primacy in competition with other new coming brands in the flourishing market and dynamic context of Tehran is not about acquiring more commercial space; it is about securing a leading role in creating detecting and supporting modern trends within the city. Benetton epicenters should become command centers for urban transformations.
STRATEGY
Our strategy is based on creating an attractive provocative character for
Benetton not just as a brand in fashion industry but also as a more
complex, controversial, modern urban generator. The motto of Benetton,
“THE UNITED COLORS”, will turn into its main strategy, strategy of
divergence and convergence.
STRATEGY
Each Benetton center can pursue a theme. These themes are generic,allowing the center to get involved in a diverse range of plots.
While sharing a common overall character as their rigid part of identity, the four centers along Vali-e-asr Street compete among
each other to generate, detect and support innovative urban scenarios based on their individual themes to increase their power
of attraction. At times all four centers involve in a single event, turning this most important axis of the city to Benetton axis.
This strategy of divergence and convergence, expansion and contraction is super interesting for citizens. It creates a magnetic
field, which involves them in the interactions and interplay of these four centers.
BENETTON ICON FORMATION
BENETTON ICON
Project A for Benetton Icon is designed as a single iconic structure.Its commercial zone is a large continuous space, which has the capacity to accommodate shopping activities as well as popular events and urban scenarios.
BENETTON ALLEY FORMATION
BENETTON ALLEY
Project B for Benetton Alley simulates the fragmented experience of wondering in the city. Its commercial zone is shuffled in its section, which creates a vertical public space with the ability to house distinct urban plots. This polarity between externality and internality, continuity and fragmentation, between the more iconic and the more urban, creates a synergetic interaction between the two centers.
