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ATAHAN TOPCU ARCHITECT B.ARCH - BILKENT UNIVERSTY M.ARCH - ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION PORTFOLIO atahan.topcu@aalumni.org www.topcuarchitects.com +905525205050
CV 01 - NB WORKSHOP (AADRL) / 2017-2019 02 - TIME INTERACTIVE PLACE / fall 2017
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03 - SANCAK COHOUSING / fall 2016
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04 - IZMIR CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
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05 - NATIONAL CONCERT HALL OF VILNIUS / spring 2019
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REHABILITION PROJECT / spring 2020
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EDUCATION: ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION / LONDON, UK 16 months post-professional program / M.arch, AADRL BILKENT UNIVERSITY / ANKARA, TR 4 years undergraduate education / B.arch
PERSONAL: N: Atahan Topçu P: Architect / M.Arch / Part 2 Equivalent B: 19.03.1994 N: Turkish T: +44 7415 495 766 / +90 552 520 50 50 M: atahan.topcu@aalumni.org W: www.topcuarchitects.com
SKILLS: 3D MODELLING / ANIMATION: Revit
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3Ds Max
FLORENCE INSTITUTE OF DESIGN INTERNATIONAL / FLORENCE, ITALY 1 month hand drawing program
WORKSHOP: AUTODESK BUILDSPACE / BOSTON, USA
3 weeks program specialization in Digital Fabrication.
EXPERIENCE: KANYON PROJE / IZMIR, TR
16 months work experience as an architect. Maya
Rhino
Grasshopper
AVCI ARCHITECTS / ISTANBUL, TR 6 weeks internship program.
NOYAN VURAL ARCHITECTS / IZMIR, TR SketchUp
2 months internship program.
Unity
MSB CONSTRUCTION / IZMIR, TR
1 month internship program at construction site.
3D RENDERING:
BILKENT UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY / ANKARA, TR 6 months exhibition assistant.
Vray
Unity
Lumion
AWARDS: ILLUSTRATION:
İZMİR CHAMBER OF COMMERCE REHAB. COMPETITION “3rd Prize”
Team: Gözde Susam İnanç / Suzan İlhan / Atahan Topçu Illustrator
Photoshop
After Effects
THE AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE PRIZE 2016 “Gold Prize” at Student Category. Team: Ezgi Tümer / Öykü Şener / Atahan Topçu
WA AWARDS / 24th CYCLE InDesign
Premiere Pro
Media Encoder
“10 + 5 Prize” at Student Category.
INVITED TALKS:
DIGITAL FABRICATION:
BILKENT UNIVERSITY / ANKARA
“Contemporary Living and Fabrication Techniques” 3D Printing
CNC Milling
Laser Cutting
SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS IN ARCHITECTURE: Kuka Robot
Nachi Robot
Fusion CAD
ORGANIZATION COORDINATOR at DAS
2 years coordinator of a student club at Bilkent University.
01 - NAHMAD-BHOOSHAN STUDIO ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION (AADRL) M.ARCH MASTER THESIS PROJECT ADVISOR PROFESSOR: ALICIA NAHMAD VAZQUEZ & SHAJAY BHOOSHAN SITE: LONDON The three-year research agenda of the studio, starting from January 2017, is motivated by the following observations regarding contemporary design, fabrication technologies and trends in contemporary living. 1. Digital design and fabrication technologies is maturing with significant progress being made by researchers in the fields of computational architectural design1, computational geometry2, structural design3, robotic manufacture4 etc. 2. Social, economic and political conditions in large, high-productivity cities such as Tokyo, London, New York etc. have evolved5 such that the market conditions are now suitable6 to engender a demand for mass customised housing.7
Thomsen et al. 2015 Adriaenssens et al. 2016 3 Anon 2015 4 Reinhardt et al. 2016 5 The guardian 2016; jon earle & irene pereyra n.d.; IKEA 2017 6 Bardakci & Whitelock 2003 7 Chong et al. 2009; Gann 1996 1 2
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RESEARCH BACKGROUND London houses has been built by bricks over centuries. London’s outdated, and congested homes could be rebuilt, without destroying the original material identity of the city. In the context of London, our dry stacked, corbelled brick types are capable to offer more flexibility and result in socio-economically robust model of housing as a result of the game play. Our housing research which is based on game approach community building, questions and tries to provoke the fact of current housing problems which has been occurred due to a natural result of current monolithic construction strategy with conventional London stock bricks.
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http://projectivecities.aaschool.ac.uk/portfolio/yuwei-wang-barcelona-block-city/ 13
GAMEPLAY ITERATIONS With the variables declared, the game is played out in the Unity3D editor. During the gameplay, the game stores information such the list of families, their profiles, number of spaces each family holds, their relative positions and the cost transactions between each of them.
COST TRANSACTIONS
The cost transactions in the game including all cell building, space building and monthly rents. All these transactions are recorded during the gameplay and exported as a csv file. The csv file is transcribed into a chord diagram, where the transactions towards the communal investment are represented in black and transactions between the families are represented in color. The width of the arcs are relative to one another and to the whole revenue during the state in time.
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Game to Architecture Process 19
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DESIGN OPTIONS CONSTRUCTION PROCESS
First, at grid intervals, the structural bases are constructed as anchor weights. By drystacking the flatbricks, each arch bay is constructed according to unit volume.Then column structures using corbelling method are constructed for structural strength and enhanced load capacity.When the upper living units are hung from the arches, while the lower units are stacked on top of them, it enables structural independency of living units – allowing any of them to be removed or added without affecting the other.This enables a flexible response to the gameplay result which can constantly shift boundaries over years.
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FABRICATION PROCESS CNC MILLED MOULD
Foamboard was used to produce moulds as they were cost effective. Using a low cost material was crucial to the aspect of mass production of bricks. Also, it was important to choose a soft foamboard to make the demoulding process easy.
CREATING A TOOL PATH
Autodesk Fusion 360 was used to the define most convenient tool path of CNC machine in terms of time efficiency and quality. The tool path design has played an important role in defining sharp edges and complex geometry of brick. In this context, Fusion CAM proved most helpful due to its great extent of work flows and cleaning strategies for milling. Pocket Cleaning and Parallel Cleaning were two of these strategies that have been used intensely in the milling process.
POCKET CLEANING
Pocket Cleaning was used as a conventional roughing strategy for clearing large quantities of material quickly and effectively. The stock is cleared layer by layer with smooth offset contours maintaining climb milling throughout the operation.
PARALLEL CLEANING
Parallel Cleaning was used as a finishing strategy in which the passes are parallel in the XY plane and follow the surface in the Z-direction. We were able to control the angle and stepover in horizontal direction to give exact shape to our moulds.
CNC CUTTING
The generated tool path was uploaded in the Shopbot milling machine and the milling process is initiated. Two types of tips were used for two different types of cleaning. Pocket cleaning uses a thicker tip and Parallel cleaning uses a thinner tip.
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ROBOTIC ASSEMBLY
MANUAL ASSEMBLY
We attempted to leverage the potential of industrial robotic arms to assemble our brick system. Hence our brick design and gripper studies were focussed on facilitiating easier robotic pick and place.
The brick 2.0 was designed to be assembled quickly and manually. Due to its straightforward way of assembling, a stacking strategy with minimum use of blueprints or drawings is evolved. This also brings affordability in design in terms of time and low labor cost. Images below demonstrates the process of manual assembly of bricks to create a hexagonal slab with the corbelling technique as in the image. Likewise, the second series of image shows the manual assembly process of hexagonal enclosure without using any scaffolding.
GRIPPER DESIGN
We started with simple grips coupled with bricks that have grooves for the gripper. We made a simple gripper using a linear actuator or a servo motor controlled by Arduino board. At this phase, we explored gripper design and brick geometry in conjunction.
ASSEMBLY PROCESS
The Assembly process mainly consists of the robot picking up bricks and assembling them in place. To make sure the brick assembly is stable after each turn of pick and place, the order of assembly is crucial. Hence, the brick place locations are sequenced in this order and fed into the grasshopper logic.
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02 - TIME INTERACTIVE PLACE FOR TRAVELLERS ADVISOR PROFESSOR: GLEN TERRY KUKKOLA SITE: AMASRA / WAVEBREAKER AREA Amasra is a town which claims to be very historical place for travellers. Its rich history begins from ancient times and reaches up to now by hosting various civilizations such as Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Genoveses and Ottomans. Time interactive space is placed in the area of breakwater region by integrating the wall of breakwater into the design with an aim of creating a fully interactive Amasra experience for travellers.
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Wavebreaker wall bending
The concrete cube-breakers are scaled up.
The wall is binded with the concrete cube-breakers.
The wall and cubes are washed by waves.
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THE SOURCE OF THE FORM: The form of the building is generated by capturing an inspiring moment of wave washing on the breakwater wall. To respect the genius loci of the town, the jungle of big concrete cubes ,present as the wavebreaker since from Ottoman period, are imposed as main structural system. Besides, the secondary structure, covers the biggest volume of the building, is imposed through inspiring from wave wash on the wall.
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Ground Floor Plan 30
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Second Floor Plan 31
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Front Elevation 33
03 - SANCAK CO-HOUSING “1st PRIZE” AWARD ADVISOR PROFESSOR: GIORGIO GASCO SITE: SANCAK DISTRICT / ANKARA This project is a result of third year architectural design studio in the Bilkent University, Turkey. Studio requires cohousing, which includes different types of residential units, commercial areas with in a concept in Sancak District, where located the center of the city.
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Residential Units Study Model
Residential Units Digital Model
2D Process of Site Development - 1 36
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Side Elevation 38
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Section Perspective View of Residential Unit Complex 41
04 - IZMIR CHAMBER OF COMMERCE REHABILITION PROJECT COMPETITION “3rd PRIZE” AWARD SITE: ALSANCAK / IZMIR This project is prepared for Izmir Chamber of Commerce Building Rehabilitition Competition entry.
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Section Perspective 49
05 - NATIONAL CONCERT HALL OF VILNIUS ``TAUTOS NAMAI`` INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN COMPETITION ENTRY SITE: VILNIUS / LITHUANIA This project is prepared for National Concert Hall Of Vilnius Competition entry.
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and rise of Lithuania and Vilnius while making a remark on the universality and influential effect of music on life. Since this competition consists of both a concert hall and a nation’s house, IA 0810 coded proposal aims society of a nation to find pieces of themselves, ancestors, history, culture, living experiences and nature to feel a sense of belonging in a landmark embracing the whole city. Not only a symbol of a nation but an emblem for European culture. Therefore, guests of the building are welcomed and enfolded in the years and years of accumulation of European music in the concert halls and surrounding open spaces while educated by House of Nation tour. The architectural concept of the form of the proposal depends on the crucial elements of the city. Vilnius is a halved city by the River Neris into the old and new town. Thus, the building is halved by House of Nation tour imitating the River Neris into two. This tour is associated with the River Neris to attribute the journey generated in the building as a natural flow of information about the city. In these separate two masses, The Grand Concert Hall
represents the New Town, whereas, the small concert hall represents the Old Town. With that being said, the form of the proposal metaphorically represents Vilnius as a city.4 When guests reach the top of the building, feelings of familiarity and belongingness to Vilnius meet with views of the cityscape that they never perceived before. There are two suggested ways to circulate this building. One is the Journey, mainly formed through the House of Nation tour and it is comprehensive in a sense that it introduces the building, its functions, and experiences while educating individuals as mentioned before. It is mainly built by ramps to allow every guest to join the tour regardless of limited mobility. The tour consists of every function of the building except the Grand Concert Hall.6 The other type of circulation of the building is more direct because it allows guests straight access into the Grand Concert Hall. The scenario of circulation types is constructed by thinking about occasions.
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LOBBY VIEW
SPACE NO: 1
SPACE NO: 6-7-8 55
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FIRST FLOOR PLAN 56
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SECTION AA
THIRD FLOOR PLAN 57
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