Riviera Kaplankaya Dense Pack

Overlooking the Aegean Sea, a new eco-reserve of small town fragments, like islands in a preserved
landscape of cultivated natural vegetation, will be characterized by advanced technologies in
sustainability, while also anchored in the poetic reverie of this ancient site. The nearby ancient Greek
town of Miletus inspires a compact gridded plan.

Three dense-pack “islands” are strategically located inrelation to the site’s topography, maximizing the natural landscape and minimizing roads, surface parking, and infrastructure: in the ground; courtyard villas with pools;

under the ground, townhouses cut into the earth;

and over the ground, a dense pack precinct with apartments around courtyards on a platform over a parking and cistern level below.

This main urban “island” has a special assembly space shaped by three solstice spiral skylights. Courtyard houses in two-story-high dense-pack construction in white concrete (mixed with local stone) have solar shades of Turkish chestnut, prefabricated in North Turkey by local craftsmen continuing ancient woodworking traditions.

With optimized solar shading, natural ventilation, thermal rock storage, and thermal mass
construction, a seawater radiant-slab system supplies all heating and cooling. Solar water heating and
gray- and storm-water recycling via ponds and cisterns further minimize the ecological footprint.