Gölbahçe

Year

2016

Client

Suryapı

Category

Residential

Area

30000m²

Team

Fuat Taşkıranoğlu, Beylem Taşkıranoğlu, Miguel Zapatero, Aurelija Doğru, Muhammet Tetikoğlu

Photographs

Gürkan Akay

Suryapı Gölbahçe is a residential development in a rapidly expanding district of Sultanbeyli, comprising six housing blocks and shared social facilities set across approximately 20,000 m², with 12,000 m² dedicated to landscaped garden. A small retail strip serving the residents is located just outside the site boundary. The blocks are drawn toward the plot edges to maximise the central garden area, meeting one another at angled corner-to-corner junctions. This configuration prevents direct overlooking between the secondary rooms of adjacent end units, while at ground level the same rooms open onto private gardens — significantly enhancing the amenity and value of the lower-floor apartments.

Suryapı Gölbahçe sits on an essentially flat site. A one-way ring road circulates around the perimeter of the blocks, providing service and pedestrian access to the rear façades of each building. A 500-metre running and cycling track follows the same loop. Open parking is distributed along the ring road, while the underground car park — accessed from beneath the block footprints — is served by two entry points and one exit.

In the site plan, a landscaped green buffer runs in front of the ground-floor terraces, reinforcing the amenity and value of the lower-level apartments. The internal pedestrian paths wind through the garden, looping around an ornamental pond before completing a circuit of the grounds. The water feature acts as a soft boundary between the shared garden and the ground-floor terraces, carving out a quieter, semi-private zone immediately in front of each unit.

The sports facilities are located in the southeast corner of the site, positioned between the ring road and the garden walls in the area furthest from the residential garden — a deliberate decision to minimise acoustic disruption to the living environment.

The social facility is situated in the center of the garden. It consists of two distinct buildings: one, with a more enclosed façade, will later be used as a management office and includes a caretaker's apartment and a children's play area, while the other, characterized by a more transparent design, serves as a combination of a cafeteria and a fitness center. Between the two buildings, there is a protected terrace with a hard surface, suitable for hosting large outdoor events such as birthday parties, engagements, and religious ceremonies, while ensuring that any noise generated does not disturb the overall site.

Two retractable indoor pools are located on the first basement level of the social facility. The pools receive natural light through their transparent roofs, as well as from the front façade, which is opened up by landscaped retaining walls and pedestrian ramps at the height of the pool level. These landscaped ramps also enhance the interior decoration of the pools, providing additional richness through both daytime and nighttime lighting.

The residential blocks present a continuous silhouette from within the garden. In our project, we considered the silhouette formed when the individual façades of the blocks come together while designing each façade. In this context, the building is vertically divided into three sections along both the garden and street façades. Each section is defined by dark gray surfaces marked by windows on the floor plans. This approach aims to create a more fragmented "street" character that conceals the length of the buildings in both the garden and street façades.