Exploded House / Bodrum / Turkey

Bodrum is an important city in the southwest of Turkey on the Aegean Sean with a rich past. Bodrum and the Bodrum Peninsula possesses a history dating back to ancient times with a high point in the Hellenistic era. Important monuments of Greek architecture such as the Mausoleum of Mausolos date from this time along with the activities of figures such as the venerated scientist Heredotus who was born there and sculpture by artists including Leochares, Bryaxis, and Timotheos that were produced in the Bodrum area and can now be found in museum collections around the world.

 

The contemporary architecture of Bodrum however has not been able live to up to the high standards of it’s past. Outdated building codes in the Bodrum Peninsula restrict new forms of architecture being introduced despite the high rate of construction and property development in recent times in the area. To overcome these restrictions to contemporary architecture in Bodrum and create a more flexible building type for residential building, GAD designed a house made from three separate buildings with an innovative approach to climate control, a critical feature in the hot Aegean climate. The design is a metaphor for a single building that has been literally "exploded” into many parts to create a new building typology around an environmentally and climactically sensitive approach to residential architecture for Bodrum. The resulting design creates a fractured appearance yet is cohesive in the implementation of an architecture intended to manage heating and cooling with a complex design employing a roof pool and natural ventilation corridors.

 

The open-plan of the main house ensures that it is light and airy, a must in the summer. As a secondary precaution, the roof of the building is covered with pools that collect rainwater acting as a heat sump. The water cascades from the roof of one of the buildings to the other and is then circulated back round, creating a natural cooling system for the hot months from April to October. This climactic performance is achieved while at the same time the architecture is in compilation with building code restrictions of 75 square meters base in a plan where each unit is built next to one another with a narrow space in between linking them with a glass atrium.

 

The "Exploded House” design reinterprets traditional vernacular dwellings in the Aegean area with same attention to the mediation of internal climate but with innovative new techniques and formal innovations. While vernacular homes in Bodrum use thick natural stone to walls to mediate temperatures in the hot Aegean climate GAD’s solution was to use passive ventilation based on large overhangs, natural air circulation and rainwater as an organic cooling system. The angular structure of the House provides protection from sunlight and acts an important formal synthesis with the asymmetric topography fitting into the rocky clefts of the hillside. An explosion of parts in the open plan also results in a number of rich outdoor spaces that despite the use of concrete and glass is also in harmony with the natural beauty of the Aegean landscape as an example of sustainable architecture for the region.