TEHRAN – Iran’s Documentary, Experimental and Animation Film Center (DEAFC) has produced a documentary that chronicles the trips Austrian architect Hans Hollein made to Iran in the 1970s.

The documentary entitled “Hollein in Iran” has been directed by Hadi Afarideh, the DEAFC said on Saturday.

He visited Iran by invitation of the Glassware and Ceramic Museum of Iran, also known as Abgineh Museum, to design showcases for the museum.

“During his stay in Iran, Hollein traveled across Iran and was mesmerized by the grandeur of ancient Persian and Islamic architecture,” Afarideh has previously said.

“This documentary gives an account of Hollein’s trips across Iran and his love of Iranian architecture, and his contributions to the interior design of Abgineh Museum,” he added.

The shooting began on location in Tehran in August 2021 and went on in Yazd and Shiraz.

While researching for the documentary, Afarideh found amazing and never before seen documents, and over 2000 slides depicting Hollein from his arrival in Iran to his efforts to design the museum.

“These slides and documents, which seem to be very attractive for filmgoers, form the basis of the screenplay for ‘Hollein in Iran’,” Afarideh stated.

Orod Atapur, director of the documentary “In Shams’ Sun” about Iranian mystic and poet Molana Jalal al-Din Rumi’s personal life as well as philosophical and mystic thoughts, has done the narration for “Hollein in Iran”.

Hollein graduated in 1956 from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he studied in the master class of Clemens Holzmeister. 

In 1959, he attended the Illinois Institute of Technology and then in 1960, the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed his Master of Architecture degree.

In 1985, he won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, an international architecture award presented annually “to honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment.”

Among his works are Haas-Haus and Soravia-Wing of the Albertina in Vienna, and Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt and Abteiberg Museum in Monchengladbach.

Hollein died in 2014 in Vienna, after a long illness, at the age of 80.

Photo: A file photo taken on March 20, 2009, shows Hans Hollein at his office in Vienna, Austria. (EPA/Roland Schlager)

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