VitrA Çağdaş Mimarlık Dizisi - Arkitera

KUUM was designed as a small settlement with an innovative design concept, in unique
harmony with its sloped site along the coastline of Bodrum. The objective of GAD was
to design the building complex in accordance with the topography and achieve harmony
with nature. A DNA was formulated in order to respond to the program requirements,
orient the buildings towards the view and design each mass in accordance with its
unique topography. The complex consists of various units situated such that they do not
intersect with trenches that follow the organic contours of the landscape down toward
the sea. The residences, the hotel, spa, the Turkish bath and the piers are located on a
total area of 20,000 m 2 located along the 350 meter coastline. The buildings do not block
the natural light, wind or view of each other while still providing shadows for the open
spaces.
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Göltürkbükü includes striking examples of tourism centers and hyper modern holiday
accommodation created by the demand of city dwellers who want comfort, luxury
and quality of life in rural areas and on virgin coasts. The region is like a laboratory for
experimental architectural products like Göktürkbükü. The big city brands have opened
branches and rural and ultra modern environments have been merged into each other,
with striking results.
The designers have interpreted the approach of organic architecture based on the idea
of indispensible integrity between structure and topography. This design approach was
popular in Mediterranean tourism architecture in the 1970s, and provides the complex
with continuity of topography, mass and landscape.
The designers were fully aware of the never-ending phenomenon of sea view fetishism,
and they utilized the view in a creative manner, while at the same time putting contemporary
ways of seeing on display in their projects. Their radical transparency concept
allows users to see the view even from the bathrooms of all units. The trouble with the
perspective getting gradually narrower while looking from inside to outside was solved
through the use of curved walls that get wider from inside to outside, thus enabling
visual pleasure and uninterrupted views.
The Kuum complex calls into question traditional designing approaches seen in Bodrum
architecture, as well as current construction rules and the tendency towards typological
construction in tourism architecture. The complex is one of the striking projects of recent
years as it not only brings together independent units such as hotel, residence, spa, restaurant,
beach club, rest and activity units, but it also has a design approach that breaks
the hotel into its parts and scatters them across the sloped area in an autonomousrelationality
pattern.
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