Ankara Office Tower
Ankara / Turkey , 2016

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. Construction of the project was completed in the summer of 2016. 

Ankara Office Tower was designed by Boston-based architecture firm Anmahian Winton Architects. rgg Architects provided local consultancy, architect of record and management of the site quality team services.