N e s tin g - Autoban · Savoy Ulus, which shares Baku’s abundance and simplicity of graphical form, is a residential estate designed by architect Emre Arolat. Autoban’s contribution

W O R D S Shonquis Moreno

By inserting one structure into another

at the Savoy Ulus clubhouse, Autoban

demonstrates the power of architecture and

interior design working in tandem.

N e s t i n g

To soften the large, cold architectural shell, Autoban inserted an inner shell of wood into the Savoy Ulus clubhouse, a 1,700-m2 sports and entertainment centre that is part of a residential complex in Istanbul.

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S e a s o n

Photos Ali B

ekman

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S h e l l w i t h i n a S h e l l Coloured drawings made by hand show the interplay between the

concrete shell, created by architect Emre Arolat, and Autoban’s intervention. By placing a warm wooden structure (the ‘inner shell’) inside Arolat’s cool glass-and-concrete structure (the ‘outer shell),

Autoban cleverly fleshed out the building.

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I N a city where modern design is still in its adolescence, Istanbul studio Autoban has thrown down the gauntlet to progressive Turkish designers. Autoban’s aesthetic influence on the interiors of this morphing metropolis’s restaurants, nightclubs, hotels and boutiques has become significant since partners and former classmates Seyhan Özdemir and Sefer Çağlar founded the studio in 2003 (partner Efe Aydar joined in 2007). Known for creating materially lush spaces, the practice is seeing its work increase in scale and sophistication, as evidenced by the completion of the stone, wood and tree-sown innards of the Arup-designed Baku Airport VIP Terminal in Azerbaijan; and the smaller but noteworthy opening of the Savoy Ulus clubhouse, located closer to home in Istanbul. Savoy Ulus, which shares Baku’s abundance and simplicity of graphical form, is a residential estate designed by architect Emre Arolat. Autoban’s contribution to Savoy Ulus – the interiors of a 1,700-m2 sports and entertainment centre – includes communal functions such as a café, a library-cum-lounge and fitness areas. Arolat designed the clubhouse as the hub of a residential compound that was to accommodate diverse lifestyles and living spaces. Meanwhile, the architecture itself had to accommodate the site’s emphatically irregular gradient, to which it responded with an emphatically faceted embrace and a building of cool concrete and glass. Formwork made from narrow planks left an imprint of woodgrain on the concrete walls, hinting at a warmth that is never fully expressed in the building. By nesting a wooden micro-architecture (the ‘inner shell’) inside the glass-and-concrete skeleton (the ‘outer shell’), Autoban fleshes out the building, echoing

its contours while articulating the warmth that Arolat had merely promised. ‘We didn’t want to lose the sensation provided by the concrete structure or its beauty,’ says Özdemir. ‘In fact, we wanted to emphasize it.’ Yet they needed to make the spaces functional and comfortable. Autoban’s goal, therefore, was to follow the design language of Arolat’s architecture, letting neither shell dominate the other and ensuring the integrity of the whole. ‘We wanted to combine his asymmetric architecture with an inner wooden shell comprising harmonious irregular components,’ he says. ‘Creating a dialogue between the shells was critical.’ Concrete can feel chilly, and as the space allowed daylight to enter from just one side, the interior was at risk of succumbing to both literal and metaphorical darkness. ‘A clubhouse is, by definition, a gathering point, and this one is in a residential complex; most of the people who use the facility live there,’ says Özdemir. ‘When they visit the clubhouse, they should still be in their comfort zone. They should feel at home. The only way to generate a warm, friendly ambience is with interior design.’ Autoban’s interiors enjoy an active engagement with the architecture, whose unique geometry spawned all the forms and all the materials chosen by the designers. Arolat’s textures and radial patterns and those of the new interior – a nest within the architecture rather than decoration grafted onto it – intersect and softly collide. In the café, panels of oak and maple – triangles of different shapes and sizes – are inlaid with wenge laths. The resulting faceted elements boldly protrude from the walls. The floors, though flat, have a radial parquet pattern that suggests both depth and motion. Each veneered panel

W o o d P a n e l l i n g

1Craftsmen at the Berline factory in Tuzla,

Istanbul, used MDF supports to determine the heights of the faceted wall panels.

2When the heights had been established, the

artisans manually installed each plywood facet at the required angle.

3The facets are glued together. Each of

the 32 unique triangular floor panels and 80 wall panels was CNC-milled to the

prescribed dimensions.

4The 4-mm brushed veneers – made from

American oak, walnut, wenge and Turkish maple – were glued onto a plywood substrate

with a natural adhesive used in yacht construction. In each panel, the veneers

were inlaid in different directions.

5Triangular panels for the café vary in

height from 120 to 300 cm and extend from the concrete walls at distances between

30 and 100 cm.

6An advantage of Autoban’s layered – or

nesting – approach to construction is extra space between inner and outer shells; layers and protruding elements provide the depth

needed to conceal mechanical systems.

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Large triangle-patterned wooden tiles on the lounge floor feature two patterns in American oak and walnut.

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‘People like to feel some sense of boundary. An enclosed space

at a human scale satisfies

that need’

M i x e d M a t e r i a l s Architect Emre Arolat added a trace of nature to the cool glass-and-concrete

building with formwork made from narrow planks, which left an imprint of woodgrain on the concrete walls 1 . Taking a cue from Arolat’s woodgrained

concrete, Autoban used wood veneers as the primary material for the clubhouse interiors 2 . In the café, wall panels of American oak and maple are inlaid with wenge laths 3 . In the lounge, the floor has an irregular pattern composed of

triangular tiles made from American oak and walnut 4 . Flooring in the swimming-pool area is made of a local marble in two shades of beige 5 .

looks like a collection of narrow wooden planks that converge with, bisect and traverse the ghostly planks of the concrete, producing a larger, more vociferous, pattern. These walls and floors – anchored to the concrete by metal braces that leave a distance between inner and outer shell – form a floating layer within the architecture, beneath ceilings that yawn upwards, from 3.5 to 6 m. ‘Psychologically, people don’t feel comfortable or safe in really big spaces,’ says Özdemir. ‘They like to feel some sense of boundary. An enclosed space at a human scale satisfies that need.’ Autoban’s layers are often discernible and a pleasure to discover: Gaspar, a restaurant they designed in Istanbul’s Karaköy neighbourhood, is a collage of overlapping wooden panels that extend from the walls at various distances. When Autoban was just getting started, the designers paid little attention to the layered interventions they made

into historical interiors, but over the course of time they began layering textures, functions, patterns, materials, forms and stories. ‘Layers make the space richer,’ says Özdemir. ‘By adding elements and narratives, we offer new experiences.’ In the case of Savoy Ulus, each panel had to be modelled digitally in 3D and drawn again in a 2D program. Instead of building a complete scale model, they opted for a 2-m-long section at full size. Take the café, for instance, where every triangular panel is unique: each angle, each dimension is unlike all the others. The panels cover the lower walls, from the floor to a height that varies from 120 to 300 cm. They protrude from the walls at a distance that varies from 30 to 100 cm. Project leader Müge Çakır Değirmenci reaffirms that the inner shell is ‘created from the architectural contours of the building’, while stressing that the arrangement of panels also

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Photo Sergio Ghetti

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Autoban addressed the high ceiling in the lounge area with an enclosed space-within-a-space: the library.

The glass-and-steel cube that houses the clubhouse library sits at the centre of the lounge.

establishes a channel between the two shells, which conceals mechanical systems such as lighting, electricity and even bar equipment. The designers selected wood – veneers made from American oak, walnut, wenge and Turkish maple – as their primary material in the belief that the building’s cool environment needed a warm, natural balance. The height of the wooden shell also addressed potential acoustic problems. They augmented the graphical appearance of the concrete shell by using two colours of wood on floor and walls, achieving sufficient contrast to underscore the architecture’s radial character. Because this stripy, radial panelling would demand a high level of precision from its builders, Autoban tapped local craftsmen who specialize in yacht construction and thus in the use of veneer. The project incorporates various types of marble, a rich material typical of the studio’s designs: Emperador Light was used for café tables, Coffee Brown for coffee tables and Serpegiente for the bar top. The swimming-pool area features

another two kinds of marble on floors with non-slip surfaces. The iridescent hues of mosaic tiles used to cover the floor of the pool itself glisten in the sun, changing colour with the angle of the gaze. In the lounge, the floor has an irregular pattern that continues on the lower sections of some walls, which rise between 5 and 6 m, but almost imperceptibly at first glance. Large triangle-patterned wooden tiles create semaphore-like imagery that consists of two motifs made in two types of wood, subtly accentuating the floor. At its centre, displayed prominently in a glass-and-steel cube that could be mistaken for a vault filled with banknotes or a latter-day bomb shelter, is a library and reading room. ‘We like to play with perceptions and to ensure rich experiences,’ says Ozdemir. ‘With its floor-to-ceiling glass walls, the library is basically a transparent box, a shell-within-a-shell, a space-within-a-space.’ Indeed, the overall effect is of interiors that fit snugly into their architecture, much the way a hand should fit into a made-to-measure glove. a u t o b a n 2 1 2 . c o m

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In the café, panels of oak and maple – triangles of different shapes and sizes – are inlaid with wenge laths. The resulting faceted elements protrude from the walls.

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I n t e r s e c t i n g L i n e s The interiors created by Autoban engage with Emre Arolat’s

architecture, whose geometry prompted all forms and materials chosen by the designers. Instead of making physical scale models of the various components, the team used only digital programs to model the faceted 3D wall panels and the radially patterned floor

panels. Each wall panel in the café (above) – no two are alike – began as a digital 3D model before being redrawn in a 2D program. In the library-cum-lounge (below), the floor has an irregular pattern that

continues on the lower sections of certain walls.

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S a v o y U l u s R e s i d e n t i a l C o m p l e xLocation Ulus, Istanbul, Turkey Design Autoban (autoban212.com) Client Çarmıklı,

Saruhan Corporation Materials Wood, carpet, glass, marble Furniture Autoban Lighting Tepta (tepta.com); Lumina Lighting (lumina.com.tr) Flooring Onur Halı (onurhaliltd.com.tr); Berline (ber-line.com) Walls Berline Area 1,150 m2 (floor area); 1,600 m2 (total construction)

Autoban translated details throughout the building into different materials: marble tiles in the stairway echo patterns in the library-cum-lounge, where triangle-patterned wooden tiles cover the floor.

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N e s tin g - Autoban · Savoy Ulus, which shares Baku’s abundance and simplicity of graphical form, is a residential estate designed by architect Emre Arolat. Autoban’s contribution