The Turkish architectural firm, Eray Carbajo, has announces Urban Rural, a new dwelling typology designed to help execute sustainable urban transformation strategies. They hope will become a model for Istanbul‘s future redevelopment. The designers are Inanc Eray and Gonzalo Carbajo.
Urban Rural is a hybrid of habitation where one can be close to the city center and simultaneously some elements of rural living, all while having strong interaction with the community and neighborhood.
Urban Rural advances green redevelopment by injecting higher levels of planted surfaces into infill residential projects. The unique form of the housing modules utilizes an efficient hexagonal grid that covers the maximum building volume with minimum number of building elements. One hexagon unit consists a polygonal area to inhabit and a triangular cavity to be used as an irrigable garden.
When all modules combined, these triangle cavities act as a truss structure transferring the building’s loads to lower members. As a whole, Urban Rural creates interdependencies between building systems, structure, landscape and architecture. Integration of such complex systems is achieved through modular design that persevere flexibility.
Urban Rural aims to minimize the building’s ecological footprint and to maximize the positive impact on the environment, while considering the economic viability of the project. In order to achieve this, component-based modular design and locally-sourced building materials together is the key.
Urban Rural is designed to become an Istanbul landmark. Building a vertical urban village in the heart of the city center immediately reduces the dependency to cars and even to public transit, and it naturally promotes walking or cycling. This generates more opportunities for human interaction and moments of communication that will eventually result in a stronger community.
Urban Rural features social and recreational spaces on the lower floors to build a self-sufficient neighborhood where people could live, work and recreate locally. Construction is expected to be completed in 2019.
Eray Carbajo is an international architecture and design studio based in Brooklyn, New York and Istanbul. They have won over 20 international awards in architecture, interior design, planning and product design.