about Sepehr Motaghed

My Life Sotry: 

Just one week after the Iranian revolution in 1978, I became the fourth and last child of a family whose “desire to know” was their most basic need.

My passion to the innovative boy cartoon and the life series of Marie Curie and Robert Koch, along with the stories of Mehdi Azarizdi, and then Iranian music lessons under Hamid Tajrishi and reading Nizami and memorizing Saadi‘s lyrical poems forced me to choose the architecture for the rest my life.

No more than two or three days had passed since February of 1996 and I was studying architecture at Yazd State University, when I was in charge of my senior year at his house, which was full of drawings, sketches, and models. But among all the visual appeal, there was the book on the radiator that I read and read and read until morning. The authors Chermayeff and Alexander and another legendary one named Edward T. Hall “the hidden dimensions” in had drawn me to behavioral approaches in architecture.

I was an enthusiastic reader for theory of architecture by Jon Lang and the phenomenology of Christian Norberg Schulz in the concept of dwelling.

Seeking to develop my professional experience, I founded KMK  Architectural Services in 1999 and entered into several contracts with Yazd Municipality and the private sector.

My enthusiasm to system thinking overcame Mohsen Makhmelbaf‘s “time of love” and Dr. Soroush‘s “the theoretical contraction and expansion of religious knowledge” and became the first place in an international architecture student design competition in 2002 at Oxford Brookes University in England.

My master’s thesis in 2004 was the study of wind flow in the urban space and developing a framework to include architectural considerations compatible with the climate in the process of designing architecture and urban space and won the best thesis award of the country in research projects trying to explore energy efficient approaches.

The invitations from Oregon, Berkeley, and Stockholm remained behind when I started the military service and the family.

Military days past while teaching at Valiasr University of Tehran and managing the architecture and interior design departments of the Iranian branch of the Eastern Mediterranean University of Cyprus and Technical University of Australia and it continued at the Faculty of Architecture of Tehran University of Arts till 2013.

Invitation to design questions on course “Zero Energy Buildings” for Iran post graduate degree entrance exam and then to design questions for architects’ entering to the profession happened in 2010.

Over twenty-two semesters of educational activity and the guidance of nearly a thousand students is my asset that I am still in touch with from all over the world.

2008 and the establishment of a personal architecture firm that has continued until today.

In 2013, in an effort to develop my professional activities, I was pushed to the position of the second master’s degree in the field of management, which led to entering the doctorate course in management in 2020.

I try diligently to establish “integrity” in all aspects of life, and I pass the anxious days of the country’s developments by researching in the field of “philosophy of architecture” and practicing NVC.

I can receive your urgent messages via +989123900073 and if you don’t mind waiting 24 hours for a reply, I will stay in touch with you through mailto:sepehr.motaghed@payadis.com.

Be healthy, happy and authentic.

Sepehr Motaghed 

Tehran, 2023