Architectural Process: Parametric Design and Artificial IntelligenceThe design process by GAD for Polat Levent Exclusive employed a biophilic perspective and parametric architecture analysis in the concept phase, considering the client brief, context, and program. Key design parameters like building footprint, floor heights, and residential apartment requirements were parametrically analyzed to generate concept designs. Subsequent stages refined building massing, layout, and floor plans, integrating planning, ecology, climate comfort, and ergonomic considerations. Design studies, including those for sunlight, wind, and occupancy-vacancy ratios, were optimized using programmed prediction simulations. This process initially produced seven distinct models, narrowed down to three, with one selected through detailed modeling and client discussions.GAD's resulting architecture for Polat Levent Exclusive is a 14-story luxury apartment complex embodying a new urban residential model. The design integrates environmental considerations, like glass facades inviting sunlight, with expansive indoor spaces that seamlessly merge interiors with exterior balconies. Located between Levent's office buildings and a low-density residential district, the building offers unique views of the Bosphorus and the city skyline. The architecture, with its distinctive natural stone facade featuring complex biophilic geometry, incorporates organic forms, large balconies, and terraces. This facade, with its undulating shapes, provides outdoor spaces enriched with natural water features and green floral textures on each floor. The sunlight-catching geometry creates a unique architectural style that harmoniously unites nature and urban elements, inspired in part by Levent's modernist buildings of the 1950s and the quest for new urban residential models.Architecture with Biophilic DesignThe design underscores the growing importance of greenery, sunlight, and open spaces, especially post-COVID pandemic. The Polat Levent Exclusive showcases this through its distinctive natural stone exterior with biophilic geometry that varies organically towards the upper floors. The facade features a honeycomb-supported laminated mechanical natural stone structure, paired with sliding glass doors equipped with solar control and high color rendering value, essential for biophilic design. The natural stone facade undulating in a non-repetitve organic pattern across the exterior of the building generates outdoor spaces for daily living protected from wind and sun while providing for intriguing contrasts to the orthogonal facades of the surrounding modernist building geometries. The inclusion of noise-reducing glass significantly lowers internal noise levels, enhancing the acoustic quality of the living spaces.During the design process, balcony parapets were shaped to optimize landscape views, with consideration for ambient noise levels. The building's form was influenced by the north's exposure, balancing limited direct sunlight on upper floors with floor retractions. The use of the podium above commercial space as expansive gardens for 3rd-floor apartments and the commercial areas on the ground level, determined based on residents' daily needs, enhance the building's self-sufficiency. The rooftop pool, designed with wind analysis in mind, is shielded from direct wind, and post-tension systems are employed to strengthen the balconies. Post-tension (tensioning) systems have been utilized to enhance the concrete resistance of these expansive, cantilevered balconies with post-tension cables having been employed in the supporting columns and beams, connecting the structural elements and increasing the building's rigidity to realize these dramatic structures that give's the building its spatial and material character.The 14-story design features individual pools on terraces and sky gardens, offering outdoor living with access to Istanbul's vital Bosphorus air and wind. The social facility on the roof prioritizes residents' well-being, enriching their social life through common space. The ground level hosts a commercial arcade that blends with the area's small-scale urban character, facing a park and restaurants. This area, curated by GAD, will also feature urban public art, unifying architecture, art, and nature as well as providing shops for artisans and makers. The social element has been prioritized throughout the architecture by GAD from the large balconies and terraces on each part to green zone on the roof and podium to the vital arcade at street level.