inside out

The main goal of the project was to create a sustainable school within the developed area of Gaziantep, Turkey. Not only in terms of energy, but in its education, its program, and most importantly engaging with its community. Derived from the Turkish culture and architecture, this project emerged after absorbing the context, and interpreting that knowledge with contemporary thinking to produce the final output. The buildings’ response to the environment since the early stages -through vertical movement during the day, and horizontal movement throughout the seasons- created the base stone of the circulation in the project. The relation between the classrooms as a basic design unit with courtyards and hallways followed a parametric shape grammar which generates the plans of traditional Turkish houses. The grammar is based on a corpus of architectural buildings that have been built in Anatolia for the past five centuries. The shape rule schemata are used for characterizing formal compositional aspects of this historic style. Through modern interpretation of the mashrabeya as one of the adopted vernacular architectural elements, all classrooms get satisfaction in uniform daylight and evaporative cooling through a developed E-cooler system. Supported by active methods, rain water harvesting, and solar collecting, this project will be constructed to reach ‘A’ rated Energy Performance Certificate. This project has won multiple awards such as the first prize of the ISOVER competition upon the United Kingdom and the special jury award on the international level.