Hossein Amanat, 75, an Iranian-Canadian architect best known for designing the Azadi Tower in Tehran, is working on a new project in San Diego that looks like it was hit and crumpled.
The residential tower, which will open next year, is a 42-story concrete building with 260 units. Varied balcony edges create an undulating facade around the inner glass volume.
As a young graduate of the University of Tehran, Amanat won a nationwide competition in 1966 to design the Shahyad Tower, renamed the Azadi Tower after the revolution. It has become one of the symbols of the capital city.
This first architectural project led to the opportunity to create some of Iran’s most distinctive projects with reference to traditional Persian
architecture. Among them are the first buildings of the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, the Persian Heritage Center, the Faculty for Business Management of the University of Tehran and the Embassy of Iran in Beijing.
After moving to Canada in 1980, Amanat designed the Jiang’an Library for the Sichuan University and the media library for the Beijing Broadcasting Institute, both in China. He also designed several high-rises in the US and Canada.
