With a quarter-century of experience, GMW Architecture partners Architect Dicle Demircioğlu and Architect Pınar İlki Emekçi have achieved significant success on a global scale by providing master planning and design consultancy for international airport projects. We discussed their design approaches, the different dynamics in transportation structures, current trends, thoughts on the use of natural stone, and their future goals.
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How did you become interested in architecture? What led you to study architecture?
DD: If you are 16-17 years old and you make your career choice based on the results of a race like the university exam, the goal of getting into a department with a high score can get in the way of what you want to be in the future. This is what happened to me and I got into the METU Mechanical Engineering Department. I studied engineering at METU for one year after one year of preparation. During these two years, I would occasionally go to the architecture faculty and admire both the building and what was going on in it. To the great surprise of those around me, I applied for a transfer to the architecture department and was accepted. So I can say that the profession of architecture was a very conscious and willing choice for me, even if it was delayed.
PİE: I was always interested in painting and fine arts. In elementary school, I decided to become an architect without even knowing the name of the profession. Later, in the university exam, I entered the METU Department of Architecture by writing all the architecture departments one after the other in a very conscious way.
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How did you continue your professional journey after graduation and how did your paths cross again at GMW ARCHITECTURE?
PİE: After graduation, I immediately returned to Istanbul and started my master’s degree at ITU. At that time, I started working for the firm that did the hard landscaping at the Hyatt Regency hotel construction site, where I gained my first multinational project team experience. After the hotel opened, I started working as an assistant to the chief architect Paul Stevens at Maya Construction, which has been building large-scale projects without a break, and I gained a lot of professional knowledge and experience from him, which later led me to be accepted to GMW. There, I also worked on the Etiler Maya Sitesi project, where SOM was also involved. After Paul’s death, I moved to GMW’s design team at Atatürk Airport, where I have been working for 25 years.
DD: For many years after graduation, I worked in the architectural office founded by the late Cihat Fındıkoğlu on many projects of different typologies and scales. In 2003, just when I was thinking of making a change, Pınar told me that the office where she worked was hiring an architect for a new project, so I sent my resume and came to meet with the management and the next day I started working at GMW MIMARLIK. Of course, Pınar was the main reason that accelerated the decision-making process for both sides. Pınar and I were classmates and roommates at METU, so our 15-year friendship turned into a business friendship in 2003 and a partnership in 2011.
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The roots of GMW ARCHITECTURE go back to the British GMW Architects due to Ali Evrenay Özveren, and we first got to know the office with the Atatürk Airport New International Terminal and Multi-storey Car Park project. Can we listen to the story of this connection and this project?
PIE: GMW, founded in London in 1947, has been responsible for many important and innovative designs such as the first curtain wall building in the UK, the tallest building of the period, some of which were opened by Queen Elizabeth. It even incorporated the developers of software considered to be the ancestor of BIM and designed King Saud University with the BIM (Building Information Modeling) technique. In 1970, they designed Terminal 7 at New York JFK Airport for British Airways, which is still in use today. Using this know-how, the Ataturk Airport project, which was started in 1997 under the leadership of Ali Evrenay Özveren after winning the competition, started to be developed at the airport construction site in Istanbul with a team of about 30 British and Turkish architects after many bureaucratic difficulties. I joined this team in July 1998. At that time, all the innovative methods and systems that had not yet been used in Turkey, but were being implemented in the UK office, were being used by the entire team regularly without compromise. In 2000, when the airport project was completed, Mr. Ali, seeing the potential in Turkey, started GMW MIMARLIK in Istanbul with a core team of 8-10 people from the airport team, which would undertake many international projects, mainly transportation projects.
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How the GMW Architects genes in your roots shaped the way the office works and the way you do business?
DD:: Although GMW MIMARLIK was established as an independent firm from GMW Architects, the system used at Ataturk Airport has continued to be used; it has been adapted and maintained over the years according to new technologies and the requirements of the time. By system, we mean a chain of written procedures for all kinds of processes that may be encountered in the functioning of the office. From time tracking schedules to team planning, from reporting to archiving and server organization, everything you can think of, it is clear what to do and how to do it. Project procedures are also ready in general terms, but according to the different requirements of each project, a procedure booklet is prepared as soon as the project starts, including correspondence, minutes, document tracking, rules of use for computer programs to be used for project production. Architecture is a team work and the system is important in terms of controlling the efficiency, speed and quality of the product and bringing them all into a common language.
What are the most distinctive qualities that distinguish airport designs from other building designs in terms of an architectural building typology? If we focus on the user, how does the fact that airports are a transit space affect your designs and fiction?
PIE: Airport terminal buildings can be functionally characterized as transit buildings, and for this reason alone, passenger comfort is our top priority. To ensure passenger comfort, we make capacity calculations; we study passenger, baggage, personnel, goods, garbage flow schemes, and spatial impact in great detail. But in fact, terminal buildings are structures in which many different functions come together. Under the same roof, in addition to the passenger areas, there are food and beverage and shopping areas, baggage handling and other technical areas, offices, hotels, medical clinics and even police stations, each of which can be a separate building. Therefore, apart from passenger comfort, a terminal building should have many other qualities such as security, expandability, adaptability, easy maintenance and repair, and effective operability. If we look at the formal typology, these buildings have the characteristics of being the gateways of the cities they are located in. For this reason, they have to be attractive, memorable, monumental buildings that are in harmony with their location but add value to that place, reflecting the high values of that place. However, the environmental impact of this monumentality should also be optimum and the benefit-loss relationship should be evaluated very well due to their size.
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How have airport designs changed from past to present? In which directions have developments and changes taken place? How do technological developments find their place in airport designs?
PIE: The biggest change has been in the conceptual definition of terminal users, and there have been many stylistic changes as a result of this change in definition. The users we used to call “passengers” have become “customers” for commercial reasons. Accordingly, as a result of many spatial arrangements made with commercial concerns without much regard for passenger flow, the users have become “guests” who need to be satisfied, as a result of the serious decrease in comfort and the negative impact on trade and the increase in competition between airports. Today, airport administrations of developed countries have started to demand not only passenger comfort but also designs with high values such as the passenger feeling equal with all other passengers; not feeling that he/she is being treated unfairly for any reason; not interrupting passenger circulation with commercial areas, even if it is not the most commercially viable solution; and gender, religion, language and race equality. In addition to quantitative comfort definitions such as maximum waiting time and space per person, qualitative comfort features such as daylight, natural air, planting, and visual and auditory art are now sought.
Unfortunately, security needs have also increased in recent years as threats have diversified and increased. As airport terminals are technological buildings, they follow technology very closely and use it to its fullest extent, as long as it does not conflict with security needs. Thanks to technology, airport experiences have become almost personalized.
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You realize projects in many different typologies other than airports. Can you give examples of these?
DD: We have also done projects for different transportation buildings. Eurasia Tunnel Operations and Maintenance Building is one of them. The Medina High-Speed Train Station, a project of Foster+Partners, is the first project for which we prepared the application projects and started working in the BIM environment 12-13 years ago. In addition, we did the interior design projects of the headquarters of international companies such as Vodafone, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Odeabank in Turkey. The Iraqi Central Bank project designed by Zaha Hadid is another project where we prepared the application project in BIM environment and provided BIM management services for the entire project team. Although not in large numbers, we also had hotel and shopping center projects, such as IC Green Palace Hotel in Antalya, Burda-01 Shopping Center in Adana. Apart from these, we provided design management services for the Portonovi Resort project in Montenegro with the office we opened there.
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How do you define natural stone material?
DD&PIE: Above all, natural stone is a material that supports and contributes to our general understanding of design, which we can summarize as sustainable, flexible, compatible with its environment, timeless, and honest. Of course, it has always been a very important material for architecture because it is very durable, robust, easy to maintain and ages well. However, we always think that natural stone is a material with a soul and therefore has an emotional side that touches the human soul. The aesthetic value it adds to a building, a space, or a product is linked to its originality against standard and mass production and the feeling of “exclusivity” and “specialness” it leaves in users. This must be one of the reasons why natural stone, which has been used with great skill for thousands of years while technology and construction methods are so advanced today, continues to be an important material in modern architecture.
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In which functions do you usually utilize natural stone in your projects?
DD&PIE: We use natural stone in almost all areas such as exterior and interior walls, floor coverings, and fixed furniture. We can say that we use it in more special places, especially in places that will be exposed to heavy traffic or will be used by few people. In addition to color, texture and pattern, there are issues such as the strength of each stone, their sizing according to their thickness, density, water absorption properties, and abrasion values that we take into account in our selections. In addition, we also have to evaluate logistical issues such as where the project is located, from which quarries the selected stones will be taken, and how they will be transferred to the site in terms of sustainability. Depending on all these, we can make very different choices. If we go through the stones we selected for the Kazakhstan Kyzylorda Korkut Ata Airport project, which is currently under construction; before making material choices, we searched for natural or artificial coating materials that we could use locally, but we learned that there were no materials we could use from the region due to the geographical and economic structure of the region. We then chose colors and textures that would never age in harmony with the colors of the surrounding natural soil and vegetation, which would contribute to the modest and gentle, yet strong and durable appearance we were trying to achieve architecturally. The stones that we could reach with these colors and textures were mined from different geographies, and we chose the right stones that would fit the design by evaluating the alternatives suitable for the budget together with the procurement times.
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Finally, could you tell us about your goals and plans for the future?
DD&PIE: First of all, we wish that we as a country have learned the right lessons from the disasters such as floods, forest fires, and earthquakes we have experienced in recent years, that we architects, as the important actors of the construction sector, take a leading role in this regard, that all other actors, from functions to users, create a driving force with their demandingness, and that we as a society realize what is needed to combat climate change and sustainable development as soon as possible. As GMW ARCHITECTURE, our goal is to make an effective contribution to this movement with our work.
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