The Turkish architectural practice YAZGAN Design-Architecture-Construction designed the Modelling and Simulation Research Center for the Middle East Technical University Modsimmer in their hometown Ankara. The building’s composition is based on consecutive functional strips: sun shading steel frame, the eye-catching facade strip made from painted glass in five different colors, the strip of work spaces, storage, counter, shaft, door band, circulation band, atrium and the mirror coated pool base.
Here is what the architects explain:
“Every element and its components exist in their own constructs within a totality. The building has a double programme; simulation and research center. The circulations of these two different programmes never mix with each other; although they can be related in the future. In order to gain this flexibility, the systematics of layered strips, which resemble Turkish carpet designs, are integrated with the idea of grid in the third dimension, and all constructional elements of this project are adapted to this grid. The whole structural system and the components that make up of the building are located through a 7m x 7m upper grid and 1.4m x 1.4m lower grid. A matrix is formed through that development. The smallest common divisor space of this three dimensional matrix is a room. The elements that make up of the building inside, which are, walls, windows, suspended ceilings, shafts, etc., and the outside, which are, canopies, floor coverings of the plaza, entrance doors, etc. are located by following this grid. The building is formed through this three dimensional matrix and the design of its components and their relations. Rather than following the traditional design approach in which the architect takes part in every design process, the building is the result of a different approach in which the architect is the designer of a flexible system that is achieved through a “design of the design act”.
Architects: Kerem – Begüm Yazgan (Yazgan Design Architecture) / Burak Turgutoğlu (SFMM)
Assistant Architect: Buket Demirel – Tuğba Beyaz
Structural Engineering: APCB – Aydın Pelin Can Binzet Engineering
Electrical Engineering: Mustafa Karakaş
Mechanical Engineering: Ünlü Engineering
Landscape Project: Yazgan Design Architect – Begüm Yazgan
Project Manager: Kerem Yazgan
Prime Contractor: Mervecan Construction
to the YAZGAN Design-Architecture-Construction profile @ Architonic