Akbuk, Türkiye 2023
PROGRAM: Mixed-use master plan including apartments, townhouses, villas, hammam, and assembly space
CLIENT: Capital Partners
SIZE: 329,504 sf
STATUS: construction
Overlooking the Aegean Sea, a new eco-reserve of small town fragments, like islands in a preserved landscape of cultivated natural vegetation, will be characterized by advanced technologies in sustainability, while also anchored in the poetic reverie of the site.
The nearby ancient Greek town of Miletus inspires a compact gridded plan. Three dense-pack “islands” are strategically located in relation to the site’s topography, maximizing the natural landscape and minimizing roads, surface parking, and infrastructure: under the ground, a spa and townhouses cut into the earth; in the ground; courtyard villas with pools; and over the ground, a dense pack precinct with apartments around courtyards on a platform over a parking and cistern level below. This main urban “island” has a special assembly space shaped by three solstice spiral skylights. Courtyard houses in two-story-high dense-pack construction in white concrete (mixed with local stone) have solar shades of Turkish chestnut, prefabricated in North Turkey by local craftsmen continuing ancient woodworking traditions.
With optimized solar shading, natural ventilation, thermal rock storage, and thermal mass construction, a seawater radiant-slab system supplies all heating and cooling. Solar water heating and gray and storm-water recycling via ponds and cisterns further minimize the ecological footprint.
Design Architect
- Steven Holl Architects
Steven Holl (Principal)
Chris McVoy (Partner)
Associate-in-charge
- Olaf Schmidt
Project Team
- Steven Holl Architects
Francesco Bartolozzi, Lesley Chang, Esin Erez, Nick Gelpi, Gyoung-Nam Kwon, Ernest Ng, Dominik Sigg, Ebbie Wisecarver, Christina Yessios (Project Team)