The building was set back from the ‘protocol road’, prioritizing the perception of the subordinate arms that constitute the building mass, to reduce the initial volumetric impact. The main entrance with recess creates a spacious square between the building and the existing dean’s office.
PROGRAM LAYOUT
The top floor of the building houses the faculty offices that require a quieter work environment, while lower floors accommodate educational units, laboratories, and spaces of socialization actively and intensively used by students. Spaces on the faculty office floor are connected to labs, departmental classrooms, shared classrooms, auditoriums, and foreign language departments via the atrium and vertical circulation. This arrangement helps keep faculty offices clustered together while creating more isolated workspaces. The design features a fragmented layout on the lower levels and a monolithic one on the upper level. Regular and rhythmic facade elements reflect the institution’s formal identity and gravitas.
ATRIUM
The faculty offices, located above the educational unit arms on the ground floor, also reference the hierarchic system inherent in military education. Education units and faculty offices are connected internally through the atrium. Transparent façades of meeting rooms opening to the atrium and wide staircases emerging from the gallery create a rich and striking interior space, continuously perceived from the entrance onward. The atrium reflects the spatial image of the communication age, offering a new experience that contrasts with the monotony of conventional workspaces. Additionally, the spatial quality provided to staff and users is a key scoring criterion within certain energy certification programs (LEED, and BREEAM).
FLEXIBILITY
Flexibility is one of the most important principles of the design process. The educational spaces of different departments such as sociology, public administration and academic staff workspaces are separate from each other within the same building. The fragmented setup of the education units is especially preferred in order to prevent possible architectural programme changes that might be encountered in the later stages of the project process, which would otherwise affect the plasticity of the building. Constructing the building on 8×8 metre axis system created an advantageous basis for flexibility.
LABORATORIES
To provide easy access for military students coming from other buildings on the campus, laboratories and classrooms of each department were grouped together on the entrance level. In addition, the labs, which provide the main function of the project, are thus easily accessible from the entrance level.
SOCIAL SPACES
In the faculty block, a single-loaded corridor design was adopted which allowed the continuous perception of the atrium along the corridor. The transparent glass vault covering the atrium enables both the atrium and the circulation areas surrounding it to benefit from natural light continuously, ensuring a bright and spacious flow. The atrium space is also designed with its ideal scale and with its fit natural lighting quality for social events such as exhibitions, cocktails, and presentations. On the top floor, the cafeteria, situated along the southern facade with its expansive terrace, allows faculty members to enjoy panoramic views during the day.
SPATIAL REQUIREMENTS
The fact that a laboratory and a classroom, or a lecture and a study room require different ceiling heights and do need different mechanical systems and equipments was considered as the essential design problem in spatial organisation. Therefore, volume heights, facade typologies and mechanical systems were designed according to functional requirements. For example, height of the lecture theatres is 5 metres, and its facade is more massive than thet of other units. Rooms for faculty members are given 3 metre high ceilings, with more transparent facades, equipped with sun-shading precast panels that vary in intensity according to location.
