Istanbul, Turkey

Built in Çekmeköy, a rapidly developing area which has recently been opened to construction, in a region where there are many new housing constructions and potential residential sites, the Evidea Housing Project differs from conventional settlements thanks to the local building regulations which were drawn up taking into consideration the scales of projects that would be carried out by large construction firms rather than the scales of parcels.

The municipality determined construction values such as total construction area, the height limit of nine stories, the methods for defining elevations, and the proportions and measurements of exterior and interior projections; and the investing firm determined in a rather clear and irrevocable way decisions regarding market and terms of sale such as the distribution of housing units according to their size, the number of rooms, the size of service areas per square meter, the types of materials that could be employed and their details, plus cost limits; the main purpose of the project was to architecturally interpret these sharply defined inputs. Treated within this context while accepting the obdurate development of the surroundings, the design took shape through an inward-turned homogenous mass structure rather than scattering and staggering individual apartment buildings, which are usually shaped according to conventions of the construction sector in Turkey with windows, balconies, roofs and eaves peculiar to it. While the large area in the middle of the housing blocks was transformed into an uninterrupted interior space consisting of private areas on the peripheries and communal areas in the lowered middle portion, all vehicle circulation was kept away from this area by restriction to the road outside of the housing blocks and to the garage below.