This office building is situated in a shipyard at the entrance to the bay on the south-east coast of the Sea of Marmara, where vessels from all over the world come to be repaired before continuing on their way. Its unadorned external mass - modelled after the bare aesthetics of the dockyard, where nothing appears that isn’t used - is divided in two, and articulated, by circulation, services and wet areas. Its monumental, single-direction staircase serves all levels, emerging after the third storey to reach the top-floor cafeteria perched like a captain’s bridge. Similarly, cladding materials are avoided inside, with internal elements - many of them portable and/or flexible - rendered in equally exposed industrial materials. The building is constructed in steel; with no basement, owing to dockyard conditions, it sits on shallow foundations. The longitudinal pieces of the building, sliding against one another in a smooth geometry, provide stability for the structure.
Source: Aga Khan Trust for Culture
