The design of İZKA Service Building is principally characterised by the search for an “’in-between podium”’ where the boundaries of private and public space blend into each other. The void has an urban role as a transformative intensifier or ‘social condenser’.
FROM NOTHINGNESS TO MANIFOLDNESS ON THE GROUND
“But where we have both dark and light, we also have the inexplicable.”
Samuel Beckett
Due to the area control established on it, the lot is a ‘nothingness’, a ‘void’ for the city and its inhabitants. This part of the city, which can be described as a conceptual ‘void’ instead of a physical one, was brought back to the city. It has been transformed from “nothing” to a vital “many” for the context it is located in. To design a physical void for the city, space control was reorganized and the boundary between public and private spaces has been blurred. The void created in this context can also be considered as an “urban intensifier and transformer”.*
PODIUM
The void is essentially a ‘podium’ for the urbanite, an inviting and dynamic space on which urban life spreads. It is utilised to increase the interaction of buildings and their indoors with the city. The inclined platform extending towards the boulevard will take us to the ‘podium’ and make us experience the void at the same time. The void is continuous vertically and horizontally. Thus the offices entertain the natural air and the void is strengthened with the flood of light. Surfaces enveloping the void and the podium floor are also highlighted in red. İZKA Service Building and Entrepreneurship Centre get their entrances from the ‘podium’. The lower level of the ‘podium’ houses the public facilities on the facade facing 1346th Street.
* The concept of the “social condenser” (or social concentrator) was first introduced by the Russian Constructivists in the early 1920s. The basic idea assumes that there is a cognitive interaction not only among people, but also between humans and architecture.
