as Senior Architect & Design Manager @ ONCUOGLU+ACP Architecture

Istanbul, Turkey, 59450m2, office 
Produced conceptual design project incl. idea generation and design, planning solutions and drawings, facade design and modeling, management and presentation

Today’s city life with dense population, expensive plot areas and separated commercial zones necesitate highrise blocks based on mostly the same perfect rectangular footprints. As a result, the cities are full of office towers with a traditional planning which is the central cored rectangular floor plans repeating with the same floor heights. In Istanbul`s Maslak region, on a newly developing commercial zone with rapidly appearing high rise office blocks of the same traditional planning principle, we were asked to design a 15-storey high rise office block with 4 basements and around 60.000sqm building area which is to be the office addition of an existing retail park. Dogus Power Center, a large low-rise closed box, which was the first built retail park concept in Turkey, consists
of large volumed commercial areas such as Television studios, automobile galleries, large anchors and food courts. The given plot necessitates strict building area regulations of 31333sqm allowed usable area with 1722sqm of that is to be used on the ground floor. The main design approach aims to question the traditional office planning and to suggest and alternative office life to the inhabitants
while at the same time differing from the neighbourhood office blocks not only to be a landmark but also a strong complement of the existing building.

Even though generally most of the work in an office is done at the same desk, in front of computers, it is known that the most innovative ideas appear in between places, in coffee breaks or during different activities. Inspired from today`s innovative working spaces of such as Google, Pixar or DVG Hannover, more volumetric and spacially articulated spaces can be designed where work spaces can vary and be combined with other functions. So working spaces could well be considered as
living spaces. As an alternative to floor based traditional planning of large areas which results in full
single storey typical office plans, the large areas are taken as volumes which attach to the building mass 3 dimensionally, creating vertical richness on the office spaces by voids and floor gardens in between. Therefore, large offices, instead of occupying floor by floor, can be assigned to the 3 dimensional volumes of the mass by flexible vertical circulation within those masses. So each mass of the building will be thought of as a distinguished, individual office spaces with their own characters and kind of independence.
The initial mass studies are done in sketch up platform, considering the linear form of the existing power center, which is to be a proper graphically compliant final figure. Then the most convenient mass combination was chosen among the suitable ones for possible office dimensions and
requirements.

As on the side road there is a slope, the main entrance is planned on the flat northwest side road which is on the higher level. Open parking areas are defined as for guests while closed parking entry is provided by the ramps there. Closed parking is combined with that of power center at the basement. Creating voids for structural advantages, the circulation and service cores are kept in the
center. Steel construction with prestressed concrete panels is designed as the structural system in order to obtain flexibility on the circulation within the defined 3-4 storey office volumes. So when required, the precast panels can easily be detached to provide vertical circulation voids. This provides also a general flexibility for rentable areas and easiness for leasing the office spaces.

Due to plot restrictions the office layout was forced to be planned in an east west direction, therefore an important need for climate control and energy efficiency emerged. Even though to some extend this was provided by deep voids and interior gardens with plantations, double skin facade systems are prefered to strengthen the shading. Material choices for the outer skin is also done on this
respect. The total project and presentation period took around two weeks of time with a team of 3
architects. Solid model and 3d renders were outsourced. My main duty was general design and presentation management including the outsources renderers and all design studies including ideation, massing, planning, sketchup modeling and facade design.