ACHROME [SCAPE]

ACHROME[scape] redefines concrete as a material

The principal behind Istanbul based architecture office MAA, Melike Altınışık has teamed up with architecture students in Turkey within this year’s theme "To be concrete, Morphogenesis" of the "BETONART” Architecture Summer School, and created “a three-dimensional poetry” made of concrete, titled “The ACHROME[scape]”.

The project area was given as an extension of the gardens located at the center of AGU Student Guest Houses that is registered under an Industrial Heritage; A story which was designed as a product of a dynamic and variable process, ACHROME[scape] reveals the natural power of concrete and invites us to rethink the underestimated hidden beauty of concrete.

Achrome describes an empty space with non-linear and colorless. The color of the Achrome is nature and the material is concrete. In Latin, "morphê" stands for “form” and ”genesis” means “formation”.

Within the “morphogenesis” approach at the Achrome[scape] design, the form is 

rather than a final result of the format variables of the dynamic process products which form complexes in the form of individual cells. Cell and nature are components of a common dynamic process.

The formation process of the design involves a holistic diversification from micro-macro to different-scale material types and to the settlement organization of units. A total of 158 units, all of which are made of a single white cell concrete, are based on various forms of the formation to make the boundaries pass across. To create a design that was dissolved in the soil, which was born out of the soil and approached to the smoothness of the sky, the material was transformed into the art of existence by using thinner aggregated concrete.

“Concrete is the perfect material for studying the design of nature itself to the corresponding rollback step by step towards nature. Our goal was to prove that concrete can exhibit a beautiful, warm, elegant and delicate existence”, says Altınışık.