FIBA Education Town

The site, located on the south eastern quarter of Istanbul, is challenging topographically and has constraints imposed by local zoning permissions. Our approach takes advantage of the site’s hilly terrain, locating six storey apartment blocks at the top of each hill to avoid blocking the views for low rise villas, simplex and duplex units. This also establishes a clear suburban order to the development.

The site is adjacent to the new Ozeygin University, and developer FIBA have modelled the residential concept on the great University cities of Europe where ‘Town meets Gown’. Lifestyle and education become fully integrated; each complements the other.

Our design introduces an important unifying strategy for the entire masterplan: the concept of the ‘contour garden’ – one geographic contour level has been selected which passes though all areas of the development and creates a single level pedestrian environment which flows through and connects each residential zone.

Routes focus on a new town centre zone accommodating public realm, retail, leisure and sports facilities. The north side of the district links with the surrounding neighbourhoods with a traditional high street environment.

The development brief required a range of residential types and a series of gated communities. FIBA expressed the desire to offer a genuine alternative lifestyle to the dense apartment world of central Istanbul, offering a variety of unit types including villas, town houses, city suites, apartment blocks, simplex-duplex units and lofts serving different target groups.

Architecturally, the buildings are designed as calm, contemporary solutions integrating natural materials where possible.