PROJECT TEAM:
- Architects: Aras Burak
PROJECT INFORMATION:
- Location: Bandırma, Turkey
- Type: Competition
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The design park will become an iconic development that accommodates design students, professionals, and temporary host pavilions, sponsored events. Design park is at the same time a weekend destination for the city to socialize.
As you approach using the ferry from İstanbul to Bandırma, you will start seeing the tip of our convention hall. And as you get closer, on the top of this beautiful hill, you will start seeing the silhouette of all of the buildings. We have aimed to create this unique experience through architecture by maximizing the negative space in the buildings that will not count as part of the floor area. While we do this, each building started to have its courtyard, its atrium that becomes a pocket in the park experience – almost like a cave. The iconic character of the buildings is to an extreme extend that 5-star hotel is hosted within a pentagon plan, and the four-star hotel is located within a rectangular plan.
We were astonished by the beauty of the existing landscape and did not want to add or remove anything from nature apart for a network of walkways to ensure the park is secure and easy to navigate through. On further stages of the project, the ruins of the military buildings can be carefully cleaned up, and these spaces can become outdoor cafes, pop up stores. The ruins can be developed by the designers that occupy the buildings following a competition phase every year, which will allow us to have a richer spatial experience within the park.
It was decided to keep the interference with the preserved zone to a minimum. We proposed a local market like tent built on cables that run from the center of the park to each building within the masterplan, for semi-shaded space above the exposed ruins. The edges of the site is occupied with the buildings forming a circular path around the hill which can potentially turn into a full circle development in the future allowing the ring road to meet Marmara Sea. All back of house and vehicular access is located at the close proximity to the existing road, and the central part of the park is reserved for pedestrians.
The retail space is proposed to have three types. The first type being the permanent retail space below the 5-star hotel, the second type as the spilling out towards the central – transitional kiosks in the park and the third as the temporary cafes, pop-up shops within the listed buildings. The mall is located under the five-star hotel and is a semi-indoor space opening towards the center of the park like a castle bridge.
Bandirma Park has the flexibility to expand, by adding in-between structures in the near future because of the necklace like arrangement of buildings around the central point of the park.
