The project involves the renovation of a typical 1980’s summer house as a private vacation home in Çeşme, Izmir, on Turkey’s Aegean coast. The town of Çeşme, called Kyssos in classical antiquity, experienced its golden age in the Middle Ages when the trade between Western Europe and Asia were funnelled via the ports of the island.
Project name: Stoa House
Architect: Salon Alper Derinbogaz
Project Information
Location: Çeşme – İzmir, Turkey
Date: 2017-2019
Program: Residential
Area: 180 m²
Design: Alper Derinboğaz
Landscape Design: PRAXIS Landscape, Enise Burcu Derinboğaz
Project Team: Egemen Onur Kaya, Ömer Manav
Client: Sedefe Ataman
Contractor : MK Yapı Mühendislik, Mesut Köse
Electric Engineering: LATEK
Mechanical Engineering: ATKE
Photography and Video: Orhan Kolukısa, Yerçekim Architectural Photos
Today the peninsula is a resort town on the Aegean Sea with its beautiful beaches, wine culture and history.
“We believed the ‘ordinary’ could set the foundations for an interesting dialogue.”
The existing building is a twin house consisting of two storeys and a penthouse with long vistas looking at the Aegean Sea. The existing porch dividing the outdoors and indoors is translated into a series of shaded loggias. These platforms are built out of modular units that are shaped with the intention of creating open spaces of a variety of functions and scales.
Inspired by the beautiful weather of Çeşme the main emphasis is on extending the interior spaces to the exterior. The external loggias are shaped for different purposes such as sunrise, sunset, shaded or poolside terraces. Developing from inside to outside, the loggias also define landscape areas for the pool, the barbecue zone or the smaller plant gardens.
In the terraces of the house, the metal shading elements are arranged in two directions to cover each garden module. The sun control elements are organised in a way to cast solid shadows in the noon times and linear shadows at sunset or sunrise, extending the enjoyable time that can be spent outside. At any time during the day, a different shadow pattern moves on the white walls of the house creating a versatile atmosphere.
The terraces step down into the pool creating a gentle continuity. Porous basalt stone is used on the surfaces that contain moisture after being wet, cooling the terraces on hot summer days.
The monotonous slab-by-slab structure of the house is altered by openings in the floor plates that reach up to the rooftop as well as seating loggias embedded on the floor. These openings allow cross-dialogues to emerge between the floors, functions and landscape. On the first floor one of the unused small rooms is exchanged with a gallery space allowing the kitchen to expand vertically. The leftover piece from the slab opening becomes a platform looking out as a reading corner. The internal staircases connecting the two floors are made out of CNC-cut volumetric geometries that are carried from the walls and built as singular pieces.
The landscape for the Stoa House emerges from three concepts: Wild, Productive and Domesticated. These different characters are supported with the specific selection of planting and hardscape material palette. In the wild part the natural meadow welcomes the visitor; the productive part grows edible and aromatic plants in close dialogue with the kitchen; the domesticated part is the soft green lawn next to the pool.
“Designed as a holiday home we heard it may soon be used as a permanent home.”
