Ankara Office Tower

The Ankara Office Tower is a speculative office building designed to serve local and international high technology companies interested in capitalizing on nearby educational and research institutes, embracing the technopole model of economic development.

Urbanistically, the project plays an important role in the rapidly developing Eskişehir Highway corridor west of Ankara’s old city center. At one edge, the site borders an emerging residential neighborhood. It is flanked on the opposite side by a transportation hub for highway, public transport, and pedestrians. In response, the building is set back from the highway, making space for a habitable urban garden, buffered by a bamboo grove and providing a critical pedestrian connection between transportation node and the adjacent neighborhood. The project is distinguished from its surroundings by simplicity of expression: a minimal geometric glass volume encasing a stack of large-scale, horizontal wood louvers, set in a lush garden.

The building is composed of a fourteen-story concrete frame clad with a high-performance curtain wall, and includes four levels of underground parking. The tower’s eccentrically organized core within the narrow building footprint and its unusually high ceilings create generous spaces that take advantage of unobstructed views and allow natural light to penetrate deeply into all tenant areas. Deep horizontal mullions on the exterior control solar gain, while interior operable wood louvers, integral to the curtain wall system, give tenants individual daylight control. The tower’s tall, narrow proportions and the scale and repetition of the horizontal bands of glass and wood achieve a level of abstraction that lends stature to the project.

Architects: Anmahian Winton Architects
Location: Ankara, Turkey
Area: 250000.0 ft2
Project Year: 2017
Design Structural Engineer: Richmond So Engineering
Design MEP/FP: Buro Happold
Architect of Record: rgg Architects
Civil, MEP/FP & Structural Engineers of Record: Yapi Proje Uygulama
MEP/FP & Tel/Data Associate Engineers: MPM; Troy; PMT
Landscape Architect: Stoss
Owner Project Manager BHP International – Barnard Howell Partnership
Contractors Tepe-Tesan Joint Venture ; AECOM
Façade Contractor: Pimeks Group
Owner: Dolphin Overseas Fund LLC
Photographs: Florian Holzherr