Architecture rarely begins with invention. Most projects begin with something that already exists — a familiar construction detail, a forgotten drawing, an ordinary material, a building type that has become invisible through repetition.
Rather than asking what we should make, we usually begin with another question: what have we stopped seeing?
An ongoing map of recurring questions across projects.
This drawing is not a collection of finished work. It is a working map. Buildings, exhibitions, competitions, publications, furniture, installations, and research appear together because they emerge from the same investigation. Projects may change. The questions rarely do.
Every project begins long before design.
We collect.
We redraw.
We compare.
We classify.
We build archives.
Sometimes the project is already hidden inside those archives.
The ordinary is rarely ordinary. It only appears that way because we have looked at it too many times. Architecture becomes interesting when something familiar is seen differently — not through novelty, but through attention.
Swap Office is an architecture and research practice based in Tehran, led by Farnaz Manzour and Mehdi Taheri. Buildings, exhibitions, publications, competitions, and speculative projects are treated as different scales of the same investigation. Some projects become buildings. Some become books. Some remain questions.
Swap Office founded in Tehran, after graduating from the CAAI School of Architecture. Questioning how architecture is consumed.
Working with existing contexts instead of replacing them — the beginning of a recognizable method.
Research and design become inseparable. Reading, translation, and publishing extend the practice past building.
We don't look for extraordinary architecture.
We look until ordinary architecture becomes extraordinary.