Salon has created a new type of campus building, bringing together education and industry. Located between two buildings of the Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul, the textile academy and a teaching block, Ecotone includes learning, flexible co-working, and meeting spaces.
Part of the Yıldız Teknopark campus of Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul, “Ecotone occupies a transitional space between education and industry, sparking innovation and the development of new technologies”. In fact, the hybrid space takes on a simple structure, geenrating a new fundamental relationship between roof and slab.
Inspired by Laugier’s Primitive Hut, that explores the origins of architecture and its practice, the intervention puts in place a simple column arrangement with roof placed on top. Located in a high wind and earthquake risk zone, and as the site doesn’t allow for foundations, the project takes on a self supporting structure, using a steel mainframe and timber sub-frames, clad in laminated timber with steel connectors. To achieve this outcome, “the tubular columns employ an innovative fabrication technology similar to that used in petrol tank design”.
Ecotone, developed during the COVID-19 pandemic “proposes a new exemplar for pandemic resistant and sustainable office architecture, with the integration of outside areas, planting and protected yet fluid office zones”. Seekıng to design a better office space, implementing safe areas for individual and group working, the project generates informal open-air meeting zones. Along with these outdoor rooms, Salon integrates nature within the building and enhances natural ventilation. Finally, the proposal “employs passive geothermal heating and cooling, while water both for drainage and cooling passes through the tubular columns from sky to earth”.
Ecotone
- Architect: Salon Alper Derinboğaz
- Location: Istanbul, Turkey
- Dates: 2020
- Program: Office
- Area: 1830 sqm
- Architect: Alper Derinboğaz
- Architecture Team: Egemen Onur Kaya, Ekin Cem Tümbek, Pınar Kömürcü, Emmy Bacharach, Berkay Yücebaş, Tolga Halil Akşahin, Cansu Gösterişli, Han Seki
- Structural Engineering: Parlar Engineering
- Mechanical Engineering: Çilingiroğlu Engineering
- Electrical Engineering: Sanayi Engineering
- Sustainability Consultant: Dr. Pınar Sipahi
- Structural Peer Review: Prof. Peter Bauer, Werkraum
