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.
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 Outdated building codes in the Bodrum Peninsula restrict new forms of architecture being introduced despite the high rate of construction and property development in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.
GAD Documentary Films
A short documentary film on the architecture of the Exploded House, Bodrum, Turkey by GAD Architecture led by Gokhan Avcioglu presented by architecture critic Gokhan Karakus. The film looks at the design of this iconic contemporary house completed in 2003 in the Bodrum Peninsula, on the Aegean Sea coastline of Turkey, visually presenting the mix of topographic, natural and architectural features. Karakus critically notes the continuity between nature and architecture balanced harmoniously by GAD's architecture. The film's photography emphasizes the ambient atmospheric and environmental setting of the Turkish Aegean coast that is the subject of this documentary film on GAD architectural projects in Bodrum.
GAD Foundation works to positively affect practice and theory in architecture and urbanism with a focus on education, society and their intersection with architecture and urbanism.
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