Masuleh is built so tightly into its slope that each house's roof is the street of the level above — the one Iranian village where motor vehicles are banned outright. Mud brick and local stone are coated in kahgel, an ochre clay plaster whose colour is a working decision: the Gilan fog is near-permanent, and the yellow keeps the village readable inside it.

The system takes its structure from that: horizontal bands stacked and offset, contiguous rather than floating, edged with dark stained timber. Openings are small and deeply recessed. Nothing is machine-straight, and the distance always fades into mist.