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International Bandirma Design Competition

Pre-Design Documentation

Location Balikesir, Turkey
Year 2016–2017
Client Balıkesir Metropolitan Municipality
Job description Preparation of all competition-related documents; including an extensive book containing several pre-design analyses and research, base drawings and 3D Model of the site.
Status Competition open between November 2016 and March 2017.

Bandırma Design Competition is located on an abandoned military area, at the edge of the city of Bandırma, at Southern Marmara in Turkey. The competition includes dealing with complex and layered site conditions and a very complex programmatic requirement list.

As the competition is open for international entry and Bandırma may not very accessible for most competitors, providing an extensive documentation and identification of problems were vital to acquire high-quality participation. The competition booklet aims to direct and guide the competitors to a more informed design process.

A climatic analysis (wind, temperature, solar radiation, psychrometric charts), the visualization of the existing foliage and preserved structures, vista points and panoramic visuals have been provided. The complex programmatic requirements have been given to the competitors as schematic drawings. The competition ended in March 2017.

 

Project site, with listed historical remnants, existing foliage and neighbouring area and connections

Images from the site

Design restrictions

Climatic conditions

“An Architect” op-eds and interviews

Data mining, Production, Research

Year 2015-2017
Status Published online at arkitera.com periodically. See the whole collection here.

Bir Mimar (An Architect) is an undercover project that aims to create an objective ground for all the ongoing criticism on architectural practice scene and how Chamber of Architects is involved. Historical review shows that such arguments and discussions have been taking place since early 60s in different media, including Arkitekt Magazine, several forums, personal blogs of famous architects. As young architects, we noticed the severity of the unpublished, informal conversations and noticed how mostly they were based on hearsay and shifty grounds. That is how the project started.

The three initial write-ups started with an open letter to Chamber of Architects, with infographics based on the e-mails they sent out to the members and economic data from past working reports. The follow-up pieces included infographics depicting the working conditions for architects and employees and employers.

After getting a blast in social media, we decided to transform the project into something else, as criticism was no longer productive. The series continued as interviews with young architects who have been struggling with mentioned issues, focusing on how they managed to overcome them, and what needs to be done for the future. The series are still being published, and the finale will be with an interview with a representative of Chamber of Architects, so that the collected data can be delivered and an open discussion environment can be restored.

Until now, the series have been watched&read for more than 100.000 times and shared by 15.000 people.

From Dear Chamber of Architects; classification of every e-mail that the Chamber has sent for the past 6 years. The most frequent e-mail theme is current affairs, mainly political issues, followed by obituaries. Architecture-related issues come third.

From Dear Chamber of Architects; unfortunate days, months and years for architects: data compiled from all of the obituaries in the past 6 years.

Monthly salaries of different profession groups according to Turkish Statistical Agency. From An Architect to Others.

Ranges of monthly salaries of architects in different countries. From An Architect to Others.

The ages of winners of AIA Young Architect Award. Young architect apparently means 35+ year-old. From Age 35, We’re Just Starting.








Nodeul Island Performance Centre Climatic Analyses

Design support

Location Seoul, South Korea
Year 2016
Client Minimaforms
Job description Climatic analyses of the design scheme
Function Arts and culture centre
Status Competition

Design for Nodeul Island Arts and Performance Centre was an international open competition. The submission requirements included plans for coping with flood risk and maintaining biological diversity.

In Seoul, in March and April, there is a period called Asian Dust. To deal with these, the buildings were tested if both their juxtaposition and sections were effective to steer the wind so that the dust is disposed of. The landscape elements were also designed for dealing with dust; the water bodies act as bioswale systems, filtering the water before releasing it into the river.

Additionally, the summer period has monsoons and typhoons, therefore an even distribution of water was critical. Water collection systems were incorporated in the organic roof forms. Collected water was treated through heat pumps going down the river, and used as conditioning fluid.

Sunpath diagram and monthly diurnal temperature swings.

Psychrometric charts for summer and winter months.Shading profiles and physiological equivalent temperature (PET) calculations for different spots in the site.

Wind roses for summer and winter months, showing frequency (hours) and air temperature (C).

CFD simulations for each prevailing wind direction, to test the performance of wind chimneys.

YANDAS STREET, AN OPTIMIZED SHADING STRUCTURE

Design support

Location Eskişehir, Odunpazarı, Turkey
Year 2016
Client Odunpazarı Municipality
Function Shading structure
Status Approval stage, in Heritage Council

The shading structure covers a street in an open air bazaar (çarşı) in Eskişehir. Open air bazaars are a very common and traditional built environment in Turkish cities which has been the heart of the commerce of the city before the modern shopping malls arrived. The bazaar area has been fallen to neglect in the last decades and rapidly losing customers to the newly built shopping mall in the near vicinity. The Municipality of Odunpazarı has conceived the project as a prototype to be applied to the rest of the bazaar area as the continental city of Eskişehir at the heartland of Anatolia is known for its harsh climatic conditions, assuming improved climatic conditions would improve the user experience and attract new users to the area.

Due to uncontrolled development in the past, all buildings facing the Yandaş Street has different awning heights and many added floors. The shading structure had to adapt to this extreme height variations while providing enough flexibility to allow for optimizing the climatic conditions at street level.

The modularity of the design provides wind through the street, allowing natural ventilation through the openings compensating the height differences. The sizes of the modules have been decided based on the building edges to not obstruct the view of the facades and shop displays. The street lighting has been embedded in the structure to remove obstructive lighting elements and to provide indirect lighting.

The division and height of the structure have been optimized to allow minimal solar radiation to shop windows in the summer to avoid glare and colour degradation to merchandise displayed on the store fronts while allowing for maximum solar radiation to street level in winter to avoid frost and help with the physiological equivalent temperature. A custom Grasshopper script allows for the manipulation of the height of each module. The variable height has been connected to the Octopus Genetic Solver to provide a 2-dimensional graph showing the correlation between the summer/winter and shop window/street level condition. Final geometry was simulated for winter and summer conditions in Ecotect and Radiance, in order to make sure the values were within accepted range. 

Determining the axes between existing buildings.

The shades are supported on steel structures, situated on the axes.

Semi-transparent ETFE panels allow for daylight provision while limiting solar radiation. The panels are shifted up and down to allow for natural air circulation.

The solar radiation levels on the ground floor were controlled for several panel heights, in order to make sure there will be no frosting on the street during winter.