2A MAGAZINE DUBAI
Gökhan Avcioglu
Born in Ankara, Turkey, Gokhan Avcioglu completed his education in KSU/BA with a degree in Architecture in 1983. He is the principal and founder of GAD (Global Architectural Development), and together with his team at GAd, he has completed a number of different projects of varying functions including office buildings, public and commercial spaces, and residences in Istanbul, Bodrum, New Jersey, Washington DC, Virginia, Philadelphia, Connecticut, and Libya.
He has won numerous awards, including the 1997 Turkish Architecture Prize, the 2001 Cimsa Design Prize, and a bronze medal in Miami Bienal in 2003. A number of projects have been short-listed for the Aga Khan award for Architecture.Including two projects in Kadikoy Park, completed in 1998 & 2004, Yalova Elyaf, completed in 2001, Esma Sultan, completed in 2005, Kuum Hotel in 2009, and Borusan Music Center.
Gokhan Avcioglu and GAD’s projects have been exhibited at Galerist Istanbul, at the Mlinima Art gallery in Philadelphia, at the Mliami Bienal, at the Musuem of Architecture in Rotterdam, and at the Royal Art Academy in London. Gokhan Avcioglu has recognized by a number of different publications, including Wallpaper, Surface, City Mlagazine, World Houses Now, Urban Houses and Cafes, Restaurants and Bars, Atlas of Contemporary Architecture, Mlodern Interiors Cool Restaurants in Istanbul, and also in Mlonocle, Architectural Digest, Architectural Record, and the New York Post.
Since 2001, Gokhan has been running studios in the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris , and at Yildiz Technical University, and at Istanbul Technical University in Istanbul. He also has offices in New York, and is currently sharing his time between both cities.
Global Architectural Development has been a leader in research and concept design in Europe since 1994. The firm is headed by design principle Gokhan Avcioglu who works with a dedicated international staff of architects and collaborators.
GAD believes that current architecture and urbanism are influenced by media, culture, technological innovations, consumer habits and how these factors affect the builded environment at different scales. GAD’s success lies in its methodical research of our client’s programmatic requirements, its iterative process of digital and physical modeling and meticulous process innovation. GAD believes that architecture as a practice relies on understanding historical architecture movements as well as research and experimentation. GAD is continuously finding new ways to combine these issues in compelling and thought-provoking ways.
The firm’s main office is in Istanbul and additional offices in New York Bodrum, Kazan and Kiev. GAD & Gokhan Avcioglu have designed a wide range of projects from the small scale of a private home to the large scale of an urban masterplan. While many of their realized projects are highly recognized public facilities, such as cultural centers, they have also completed several distinguished private projects including apartment buildings, offices and hotels. The practice has been awarded with numerous prizes.
GAD is a member of the Turkish Society of Builders and Architects (TMMOB), American Institute of Architects (AIA) and Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) GAD is currently collaborating with Cecil Balmond, Philip Gumuchdijan, and with Jeff Lee-MIark Papa in international projects.
Trump Cadde
Project Location: Mecidiyekoy / Istanbul / Turkey
Architectural Project & Design: GAD architecture
Project Team: Tahsin İnanici, Jonas Kirsch, Derya Arpaç, Gökşen Güngör
Landscape Project: GAD
Project Date: 2013
Contruction Date: 2013-2014
Construction Type: Steel construction + lightweight construction
Site Area: 2.100 m2
Total Construction Area: 1.040 m2
Commercial: 25 units, 2 floors, recreational rooftop, parking (underground) Photography: Alp Eren
It’s so ambitious and courageous that the word food coui just falls short. Cadde opens in Mecidiyekoy, Istanbu bringing more than 25 carefully chosen fashion and lifestyl retailers and of course restaurants on Trump Towers’ roc terrace and turns it in to much more than what you migl expect from any other mall.
In using the container - as an every architects drean breaking the boundaries of modularity, uniformity an ubiquity - the project combines the individual units int a redundant system to transform and change its characte from there. Playing with the positve and negative volumes alternation of open, semi-open and enclosed space, Cadde becomes more than simple a container transformation, br more an integral master plan, re-adding these qualities the we so familiar with from the ancient model of the bazaar and agora into the introverted shoebox design of today.
Besiktas Fishmarket
GAD & Gökhan Avcioglu
Project Location: Beşiktaş, Istanbul, Turkey Client: Beşiktaş Municipality Architect: GAD & Gokhan Avcioglu
Project team: Ozan Ertug, Serkan Cedetas, Gözde Demir, Tahsin Inanici
Building Type: Low Rise
Project Type: Retail
Project Site Area: 320 m2
Project Data: 2007- 2008
Construction Date: 2008-2009
Construction Area: 320 m2
Awards:
-2012 International Architecture Award for Beşiktaş Fishmarket, The Chicago Athenaeum
-2010 Nominee in the category ‘built’ for Beşiktaş Fishmarket, 2010 Urban Intervention Award, Berlin
Photography: Alp Eren
Beşiktaş Fish Market is a renovation project that involved replacement of old Fish Market and maintain its iconic presence in the neighborhood.
Location: Beşiktaş is an eclectic area with a village atmosphere located in one of the most popular and different from Istanbul, Turkey, which is in the process of urban restructuring while taking care not to lose their identity.
Beşiktaş Fish Market is located in a triangular area of 320 square meters, a comer emblematic of the commercial area.
Borusan Music and Art House
GAD & Gokhan Avcioglu
Project Location: Beyoğlu, Istanbul, Turkey Client: Borusan
Architect: GAD & Gokhan Avcioglu
Project team: Barış Uçar, Ozan Ertuğ, Ayhan Ürgüplü, Arzu Meyvacı, Yeliz Özsoy, Melis Eyüboğlu, Bora Soykut, Gözde Nur Demir, Serkan Cedetaş, Ertuğrul Morçöl
Start / Completion: 2007 / 2009
Building Type: Mid Rise
Project Type: Cultural
Project Site Area: 230 m2
Construction Area: 1900 sqm
Status: Built
Awards: -2012 Highly Commended Public Service Architecture with Borusan for Turkey, 2012 International Property Awards -2011 International Architecture Award, Chicago Athenaeum and Europe Architecture Centre for the Borusan Music House
-2011 Best Alternative Investments, ArkiPARC for the Borusan Music House
The Borusan Music and Art Center in the historic neighborhood of Beyoglu-Pera is a multi-purpose event space for exhibitions and performance. This new space symbolizes the cultural and art renaissance occurring throughout the city while paying homage to the grand architectural legacy of Istanbul.
Historic shell of the Belle Époque era building was preserved and restored. The building core was carefully removed to reveal a constructible void. A structural ‘box’ was inserted which created the opportunity for a contemporary program within the building core. This ‘box’ was designed and built using lightweight steel diagrid frame system along its perimeter.
Arrangement of design allows for an open plan and offers usage flexibility between all floors. The inserted ‘box’ seems to defy gravity, framed and articulated from historic masonry shell. This juxtaposition activates a playful tension not only between materials and construction, also between past and present. This restoration illustrates the notion of "mask and skull,” calling out the former building’s shell as ornamentation and the program within as a perfectly disconnected space within.
GDKP
GAD & Gokhan Avcioglu
Project Location: Fatih, Istanbul, Turkey Clien: Fatih Municipality Architect: GAD & Gokhan Avcioglu
Project team: Scott Baltimore, Ozan Ertug, Nilufer Karanfil, Muge Tan
Start/Completion: 2010
Building Type: Low Rise
Project Type: Urban Design
Project Site Area: 11.200 sqm
Construction Area: 22.100 sqm
Status: Design
Awards: 2012 Urban Regeneration and Master Planning Award for GDKP, MIPIM AR
GDKP is a proposal for a contemporary solution to one of the oldest building typologies- the bazaar. The bazaar is a fundamental component of Istanbul life and culture, and this proposal seeks to reinvent the bazaar, studying the core principals of the bazaar, and the way in which fundamental architectural forms may be combined and multiplied in new ways. Conceptually, the GDKP proposal begins with a simple structural grid, which is distorted and adapted to the parameters of this particular site. Historic buildings are preserved, and available land is developed as sellable retail space. The result is a system, or component, that stacks & grows as allowed by the parameters of the site. The intention is that this system, as tested by one particular scenario, could be adapted and multiplied in a number of different locations in the city.
The arch serves as the elemental form in this proposal, and is combined & multiplied to arrive at an unpredictably complex spatial organization. Green terraces and semi-open spaces fill the void between stacked modules. Wooden panels & colorful enclosures begin to define space, and the distinction between inside and outside is blurred. The result is something familiar, yet a new invention for a historic problem.
