ANKARA OFFICE TOWER

The Ankara Office Tower is an integrated expression of building program and urban environment, serving high tech companies seeking academic/industry partnerships with leading academic institutions in Turkey’s capital city.

The project establishes cohesion at an ill-defined edge of a rapidly developing urban district, where unplanned commercial growth and infrastructure had eroded the structure of local neighborhoods. In response, the building is pulled back from the adjacent highway, making space for a bamboo grove that buffers a new urban garden and creates the only pedestrian connection to public transportation, knitting together individual and community experience.

PROJECT LOCATION
Ankara, Turkey

PROJECT SIZE

250,000 SF

PROJECT TYPE

Workspace, Urban Design, Office Space

CLIENT

Dolphin Overseas Fund, LLC

The Tower is distinguished from its surroundings by clarity of expression - a geometric glass volume encasing a stack of large-scale wood louvers, set in a lush landscape. Over the course of the day, its design produces a transformative effect. Sculptural horizontals successively shift as they wrap the tower, creating different patterns depending on the sun’s position and the pedestrian’s perspective. As louvers open and close according to interior needs, the Tower itself appears either permeable or reflective, revealing patterns of use and activity within.

The Tower’s innovative cladding system integrates a conventional curtain wall with deeply profiled transom cover caps, optimizing solar gain and maximizing operational efficiency. Large-scale interior wood louvers also integral to the curtain wall mitigate glare while enhancing daylight distribution throughout the workspace and maintaining views. Centrally operated but with local overrides, they give tenants individual daylight control within their workspace, appealing to contemporary aesthetic preferences and variable workplace needs.

Design of public areas develops visually layered spaces whose scale, enclosure, and use of light reference regional culture. Flanking the building is a public café whose glass walls are surrounded by bamboo, an extension of the urban garden that filters light and is itself surrounded by a GFRC latticework enclosure. This series of screens creates an intimate, shared precinct that offers privacy and guides views. Additionally, hundreds of small, pendant fixtures in the lobby establish a virtual ceiling that enhances human-scale interactions while celebrating the space’s monumental qualities, shaping a grand public space that also feels welcoming.