ÇAMLICA RESIDENTIAL - TURKEY

Alper Aytaç

Biography

Alper Aytaç was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1977. He received his Bachelor of Science in Architecture degree from the Ohio State University in 1999. He worked at NBBJ and Eisenman Architects as a project assistant. In 2003, he received his Master of Architecture from the Southern Californian Institute of Architecture (SCI - Arc). In 2005 he founded Aytaç Architects in Istanbul that is engaged with building design, urban design, interiors and landscape design at all scales. The office operates like a laboratory with the aim to render space and building more mobile, dynamic, active than they have previously been understood as stasis and sedentary. The office strives to create powerful and clear design solutions individual to each project and site. In 2012 the office together with Eisenman Architects was awarded first prize in the Yenikapı Transfer Point and Archaeopark Competition.

The Office has received the ASLA Award in 2013 and the Chicago Athenaeum International Architecture Award in 2014 for the Hebil 157 Houses project.

ÇAMLICA RESIDENTIAL

The project sits on a unique hill “a quartzite monadnock” that has resisted millions of years of erosion caused by rivers and streams. This dynamic formation of the paleotopography influences the dynamic relationship between unity and variety of form, space, landscape and social association to create a series of complex space where new social interactions could be generated.

The model we developed for the Çamlıca Housing Project, provides a responsive alternative to unpleasant apartment blocks dispersed all over Istanbul that do not establish a state of balance with their surroundings.

The basic parti is a low –rise bar form, modulated in three defined widths and variable lengths that fold and deform along the contour lines thus enabling long edges to embrace the views of Bosphorus where Europe and Asia meets.

This is a different idea of modular repetition and variation where it is neither a row housing nor a detached villa, it is a hybrid form where it takes advantage of both, creating a social “village” like environment. These spaces interlock each other like a jigsaw puzzle to create variety of possibilities for different types of users. The Project, not only responds to the variety of family and user types, but also expresses this variety as part of the urban landscape.

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