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Architects: Oficina Asma Bahçeleri Houses
- Area: 32000 m²
- Year: 2008
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Photographs:Cemal Emden
Text description provided by the architects. With its capacity of 720 students and various facilities including the dormitory, lodging places, sports hall and conference hall, the intense functional layout of the education building is designed as consisting of discrete parts with different elevations within an integrated whole. The layout of discrete blocks in the site plan is connected with a social artery to which facilities of different strata are articulated in the third dimension, i.e., via a transparent gallery and a series of successive courtyards.
Offering enriched means of social living as if resembling an urban square, this gallery is supported by the sports hall and the conference hall on the ground floor and spaces like the conference hall and the student canteen as well as workshops and classrooms on the entrance floor. The gallery acting as a social artery avails for a visual dialogue while it visually connects the gallery with outer courtyards.
When walking along the urban streets, one can possibly have connections not only with the inner gallery, but also the outer courtyard. In order to support such diverse means of communication provided within the building, effort is also spent for creation of a dynamic environment with use of vivid colours. The visual richness of the building is further reinforced with its fragmented building form as well. The existing green pattern - olive grove is purposely intertwined with the building mass in the design. While one part of the various terraces provided at different elevations are converted into open areas for students, the focus at other parts has been to ensure continuity of the green.
The idea to cover the terraces of education units with vegetation in harmony with the land slope has not only provided for continuity of the green, but also helped in placement of accommodation facilities (dormitory and lodging) separately from social and cultural facilities, at a location facing this green pattern created by the olive grove. The education building could therefore meet the idea of differentiating between the daily and private life of its users. The terraces designed to take place at different elevations of the building have been allocated to outdoor playtime area on the classrooms floor and were used as roof gardens on the resting hall floor of the dormitory. Landscape design intends to give the roof garden a rural atmosphere.
