ERSA Ideas House is a showroom and creative hub for furniture design, visual design, and new media production. The design is a reflection of ERSA’s CORE IDEAS for the furniture company’s social exchanges, its showroom experience and its workplace. The experience is unveiled behind a decorative façade of moiré inviting one into its core, a multi-level lantern connecting the diverse functions. The structure is illuminated with natural light and simple finishes while the vibrant colors and atmosphere is created with the collection and artifacts intended to stimulate creativity and reflect firm’s attitude.
Project name : ERSA SHOWROOM IDEAS HOUSE
Place: Altunizade, İstanbul
Function/Use: Ofis ve Showroom
Parcel Area: 1320 m2
Total Construction Area: 1390 m2
Structure: Concrete, Steel
Designer Architects: Murat Şanal, Alexis Şanal
Project team: Begüm Öner, Cibeles Sanchez Llupart, Orkun Beydağı, Bassil Taleb, Matyas Skardelli
Project Completion Year: 2016
Employer: ERSA MOBILYA
Photographer: Şener Yılmaz Aslan
ERSA IDEAS HOUSE and SHOWROOM
ERSA founded its creative center in Istanbul when it made a move toward becoming a global design brand in workplace furnishings. The foundations of the design brand’s new communication strategy are built around The Core Ideas whose principles can be summarized in 5 verbs: Innovate, Design, Engage, Aspire, and Share. Driven by a passion to be one of Istanbul’s new locomotives in creative industries, for the design commission of their new flagship Istanbul space, ERSA has, from the outset, embraced the priority of creating a place that functions as a thinking environment (Ideas House), as a meeting place (Showroom), and a transdisciplinary production studio (working settings). The Showroom is where are displayed products and accessories from ERSA’s own design collection as well as those of international partners (Cappellini, Haworth, Quadrifoglio). This is where the team makes decisions together with diverse client groups to create meaningful, serene, and people-focused designs. The Ideas House is a meeting place where the arts can extend to the design world their sprouts of thought, born from a transdisciplinary creativity which knows no boundaries. The Working Settings reflects the practicality and variety of workplaces which the diverse actors and workgroups require to be productive participants in leading the design sector.
THE ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPT: A BUILDING WRAPPED AROUND A BUILDING
The aim was to realize a project that would function in bringing together the actors of the creative economy in a space conducive to preparing prototypes, product launches, customer experience, and new design commissions, as stated in ERSA’s new corporate strategy, and also in supporting the workspaces for the marketing, sales, and partner management teams. The plan was to situate the flagship Ideas House in a prestigious neighborhood which has a concentrated stock of characteristic 1970s two-story buildings where many multinational companies locate their Turkish headquarters today. The design brief was to convert the existing building which had low floor-to-floor heights and a small footprint into a spacious showroom, memorable event hub, and a 21st-century design experience in Istanbul.
SANALarc took on the project of converting the older building into a contemporary environment that would house the design brand of the 21st century. Three main interrelated compositional spatial responses came to shape the new architectural design: The Billboard, The Winter Garden, and The Sequence of Settings.
THE BILLBOARD
Putting forward ERSA’s commitment to visual culture, the “Billboard,” which is used as a window to display furniture products, also assumes the function of an outward-facing notice board for the BOX-IN-A-BOX platform, a proof of the brand’s innovative identity. The moiré pattern developed specifically for ERSA and used on the Billboard was thought of as a kind of dynamic and visual background for the design brand which could resonate in all their subsidiary partner showrooms. The yellow box suspended on the front façade bears witness to ERSA’s full-scale transition from furniture manufacturing to the creative industries platform in Istanbul. The display window embedded in the Billboard allows for a kind of public space that can be used for product presentations and/or seasonal events, not only by furniture designers but also by illustrators and craftspeople, and even musicians.
THE WINTER GARDEN
A space with a cubic volume surrounded with greenery where ERSA’s innovative design team, both in-house and out, can work together with multinational solution partners. At the same time, this space is a playful environment where surprises can arise at any moment, and a unique place for displaying products bearing new signatures from Istanbul’s design culture as well as by global designers. Architecturally the billboard transitions the visitor’s experience from the city scale of the arrival into the entry landscapes that invites the body to move softly under the façade and seamlessly enter into the spacious showroom. The Winter Garden provides a permeable and animated visible connection between the main showroom on the lower level and the office spaces on the upper level. Two sculpted columns surrounded by a glass veil support the volume of the cube’s roofing. The rear façade cladding of the inherited building was removed, allowing the upper building levels to perch into the volume and borrow natural light, city views and connectivity for the showroom’s daily life. The Winter Garden is a meeting place where artefacts, discussions and narratives come together – a sort of living design theater for creative industries to unfold.
THE SEQUENCE OF SETTINGS
In the new architecture, starting from the very entrance, the aim was to create an uninterrupted series of settings where there would be distinct places for exchange, but also a continuous flow of movement where the ERSA team, as well as corporate clients, artists, and visitors would seamlessly interact and encounter one another. The showroom entry was created as an extended threshold situated slightly under the Billboard. Upon entering, visitors find themselves in the Showroom which offers a view from the inside out simultaneously with the Winter Garden volume above. When they wander around the forum in the middle –which provides a large performance area that can be used both by partners and clients for events, workshops, and seminars– visitors are drawn to the Winter Garden while they are still inside the Showroom. Flooding the forum with light, the Garden triggers a curiosity about what remains beneath the volume. While designing the sequence of settings, all office units were positioned such that the other spaces would be within their line of sight. The result is an integral new building where natural light can be felt in all spaces, which preserves its relationship with greenery, and where one can spend time with serendipitous encounters in the company of peers and colleagues.
ŞANALarc
ARCHITECTURE RESEARCH CITYSCAPE STUDIO
SANALarc is a knowledge-centric practice-based architecture and city-design studio in Istanbul since 2002. The studio explores how unique characters of place intertwined with technology, art and social life generate distinctive and expressive environments that delight people’s imaginations and enhance the quality of life. The Studio extended its expertise to conceptualize and design knowledge communities, culture and art institutions, smart experimental structures, public space, education and urban (habitat) infill. Some of the recently completed works include Bomontiada, Sishane Park, SALT Research, Robert College Library, BU Rasathane Campus Master Plan as well as collective urban research and design projects like “ Pazar – Making” , HEY! Imaginable Guidelines.
