Architecture Portfolio+CV (2023)

Photo credits: Lea Thijs, 2022.

Name

Birth Nationality

Eren Gazioglu

November 21, 1994 — Istanbul, Turkey

Turkish, Portuguese

Introduction Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa (MSc. in Architecture), Politecnico di Milano (BSc. in Architectural Sciences). My multicultural journey provided me with a solid foundation and culture in architecture and design, and valuable social and linguistic skills (English, Turkish, Italian, Portuguese, French, Spanish).

While I knew early on about my passion toward construction, only at the end of my studies have I realized that the notion goes beyond its architectural counterpart. Throughout the years, I’ve broadened my horizons by exploring a variety of creative disciplines with construction at their heart (music production, programming, calligraphy...). In turn, they have played a crucial role in informing my architectural work. Being many things at once does not mean being less of each— as a result, I’ve acquired not only a wide range of technical skills, but also a deeper understanding of the art of building a project.

Languages

Turkish (Native)

English (Fluent)

Italian (Fluent)

Portuguese (Fluent)

French (Fluent)

Spanish (Advanced)

Personal Information Professional Experience

05/2021 – 11/2021

05/2020, 09/2020

04/2019 – 07/2019

05/2016 – 08/2016

Software AutoCAD (Expert)

Adobe Creative Suite (Expert)

Rhinoceros (Advanced)

Microsoft Office Suite (Advanced)

Blender (Intermediate)

SketchUp (Intermediate)

Junior Architect at Gonçalo Byrne Arquitectos (Lisbon, Portugal)

Active role in the design process of ongoing projects, preparation of technical drawings and models.

Independent Architect at Gonçalo Byrne Arquitectos (Lisbon, Portugal)

Active role in the design process for Lisbon “SRU” competitions.

Architecture Intern at Atelier Bugio (Lisbon, Portugal)

Design and preparation of physical models.

Architecture Intern at 02Arch (Milan, Italy)

Participation in ongoing residential projects.

Academic Experience

Date Summary

Thesis Orientation

Date Summary Title

Date Summary Thesis Orientation

September 2020.

Architecture (MSc.) in Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal).

Constructing Audio: A Renewed Analogy (research thesis + architectural project).

Joaquim Moreno (Theory), Inês Lobo (Project).

July 2017.

Academic Publication in Estudo Prévio.

Politics and Architecture in Turkey (1923–1960) (scientific journal article).

September 2016.

Architectural Sciences (BSc.) in Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy).

Architettura in Turchia: Behruz Çinici e il Pluralismo (research thesis).

Paola Pleba.

Parallel Activities & Interests

Programming

Date Summary Details

Since 2019.

Web development (Front-end), utility programs, hobby projects (game development).

Began learning to program with Python during the initial 2019 lockdown, which gradually evolved into a game development hobby (both programming and art). In 2022 got into web development (Front-end) after following an open-source curriculum (The Odin Project).

Music Production

Date Summary

Details

Since 2011.

Composing, performing, and producing music.

Self-taught, started playing the guitar in 2007, composing & arranging in 2009, and recording & producing in 2011. Actively practicing music production, mixing, and mastering digitally since 2018 (beginning with investigations for my Master’s thesis).

Bookbinding & Layout Design

Date Summary Details

Since 2013.

Making handmade & customized notebooks, and preparing layouts for print/web.

After starting binding my own sketchbooks as a way to reuse printing paper, it quickly turned into a side project of designing & crafting calendars, agendas, portfolios, posters, and even my thesis. Organized workshops on sewn notebooks reusing packaging & paper.

Project — Casa Cerca da Vinha

Competition — SRU Ferreira de Castro

Project — Bazaar of Martim Moniz

Assignment — Museum of Discomfort

Competition — Ominous

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Gonçalo Byrne Arquitectos

Telmo Cruz, Miguel Pacheco, Joana Sarmento, Pedro Soares

Residential May 2021 – November 2022

Casa Cerca da Vinha

Location

A constructed scenery of valleys and hills, evergreen oaks and cork oaks, the “Montado Alentejano” is a challenging yet equally rewarding landscape to design for. The project —a single-family villa— is located in one such territory, perched atop one of its ridges that offers expansive views in all directions, while inducing the project toward a more linear design.

This narrow ridge (with an effective width of approximately 20m), descending gently toward the north, is further interrupted by very delicate cork oaks which are classified as natural heritage in Portugal. As a response and a starting point, the house hugs one particularly central tree, and unfolds along a wall of rammed earth that marks the ridge.

1:500 Volumetric study model.

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Cross section A.

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Cross section C.

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Cross section B.

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Cross section D.

Project area, northward.

Volumetry

By slicing the hill lengthwise, the wall of rammed earth reveals the terrain’s asymmetrical nature, the slope on its eastern side being less forgiving than the other. Centered on the ridge line, the roof reflects the movement of the earth by leaning more heavily toward one side.

Gently plunging northward, the roof gains further coherence with the land. As a consequence, it generates distinct kinds of spaces on each side of the wall: all differing in height, depth, and light. Alternating patios and earthen volumes on either side add to this diversity of experiences by capturing the sun in various ways and extending the living spaces outward.

The subtle differences in height in both directions, in conjunction with the alignment of the spaces along an uninterrupted spine, help channel the air into the house while directing the water where it’s needed.

Construction details. 1:50

Longitudinal cross section.

Longitudinal façade (West).

Render credits: Iacopo Manini, 2020.

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Gonçalo Byrne Arquitectos

Anna Cavenago, Telmo Cruz, Cláudio Gonçalves, Iacopo Manini, Nuno Marques, Miguel Pacheco

Residential/Competition

September 2020

SRU — Ferreira de Castro

Introduction

A cycle of competitions promoted by the Lisbon Municipality, the SRU Renda Acessível is a response to the rise in rental prices and the scarcity of housing supply. Any proposal, in this respect, should guarantee a high standard of living while keeping the prices at an accessible level— without losing sight of such notions as comfort and sustainability.

Concept

Along with the competition brief, a “Concept Study” was provided as a guideline for the design: a block comprised of narrow cells that allow for various configurations depending on their grouping. In search for an even more efficient and responsive architecture, the design proposal explores an alternative where the structure is moved outside of the box— a metallic frame expressing lightness and privacy in all four facades.

Coming into contact with the site, the ground floor reveals a more robust core of concrete which enables the outer mesh to be as slender as possible. The filigree becomes a gallery that responds to the topography, generating diagonal expressions on the façade in the form of handrails, mirroring the stairs and ramps that organize the ground floor. These bracing elements bridge the public domain and the private floors by communicating with the pergolas outside, and with the handrails of the balconies above.

Render credits: Iacopo Manini, 2020.

The outward placement of the structure, beyond the obvious advantage of gaining more space inside the apartments, also allows for the threshold between the balconies and the rooms to move freely. This flexibility, combined with the subdivision of the 3.00m metric in half, makes it possible to remove one balcony module in order to guarantee privacy between apartments, whose area is compensated as it grows in depth.

Typology

Two-bedroom apartment typology.

Render credits: Iacopo Manini, 2020.

While this removal guarantees the detachment of the apartment on one side, the other is occupied by the kitchenette, creating a third kind of environment that is neither inside nor outside, and that enjoys the qualities of both. The depth required by the kitchen module is provided through the rhythmic movement of the threshold, and all these actions combined result in an environment that is spacious and unwasteful.

Render credits:

Iacopo Manini, 2020.

Façade and underground parking section. 1:200

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Joaquim Moreno (Theory), Inês Lobo (Design)

Public/Infrastructure

September 2019

Bazaar of Martim Moniz

Location

A promising ending point for one of the most vital axes of the city, Avenida Almirante Reis. In terms of urban morphology, this square presents a problematic area, where many different urban fabrics converge yet fail to blend into each other. The terminal point of the avenue is, in essence, an oversized roundabout: as the axis reaches Martim Moniz, the two ways of the street are separated, and they circulate around the void, as sharks around an island.

Strategy

The design tackles this issue by taking a “both-and” stance: ensuring the conditions of a successful intervention by dividing the void into parts, and engaging with it through architecture. It involves the simultaneous mitigation of its overwhelming nature and insertion of a critical mass capable of regenerating a cohesive and coherent urban fabric.

The initial gesture for this dual action is an act of reversal: the interrupted Almirante Reis is once again extended, this time until it reaches an important focal point— the location where the city’s gates used to stand. The straight line of the avenue bends consequently to follow the built environment it comes in contact with, thereby being incorporated into the framework of the downtown. The moment of inflection generates a dialogue between the historical street, the chapel, the staircase, and the old Salão Lisboa.

3D Model insertion into aerial photo.

The extension of Almirante Reis generates the conditions for an architectural intervention that further articulates the public domain. The act of reversal defines the terminal for Rua do Benformoso; the act of building defines a new square where the avenue and the street dissipate into the framework of downtown Lisbon. By erecting a rigid front, the void is reduced and contained— the bazaar can relate to it and to the buildings surrounding it.

On the opposite side of the chasm, now freed from traffic, the same approach produces a different result: building a front with the residential complex creates an open space of linear nature, one that rises gradually as it progresses northwards.

Against this inclination, a gentle counterslope becomes the initial gesture that lifts the urban ground to a higher location and doubles as an auditorium. From the urban condition of the street, one reaches a compact in-between space— a mezzanine floor that accommodates permanent shops and services. The slope comes to a halt at the core of the bazaar, where stairs and elevators form immediate vertical connections between the various parts of the public domain. It then folds out and resumes its ascension, culminating at the top of the platform. Levitation reinvents the cityscape.

Physical model.

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1:1000 1st floor (top) and ground floor (bottom) plans.

Longitudinal section (top) and façade (bottom).

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Telmo Cruz

Maria Arega, Iroã Borges, Nicola Clivati, Carlos Jorrim

Museum/Public

January 2018

Museum of (Dis)comfort

Architecture

A thin, tile-covered concrete shell, accommodating life in the cavernous space underneath. The roof, as a flat surface that comes in direct contact with the street, invites public enjoyment of itself, punctured by skylights in continuation with the daily functions of the habitations. By its existing nature, the terrain descends as it proceeds to the opposite edge of the site, revealing an entrance to the building proper. The outer shell rests on pyramidal plinths corresponding to the corners of each skylight, dividing the void in parts and creating useful nooks and divisions by connecting to each other.

In the center, an uncovered module reveals the communal core of the project: a body of water as a result of the extention of the corner plinths, creating a space that relates both to the interior and the exterior. The plinths themselves are hollowed at the base to create a cistern with four separate tanks, two of which are connected directly to the central pool to collect excess rainwater. Two smaller pools in separate areas produce a more secluded experience through the downward extension of the covering, whose water is channeled through a filtering system that is stored in the remaining two tanks.

Central pool area rendering. 1:500

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Cross sections A, B (top to bottom).

Entrance-level floor plan.

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Comfort: from the Latin word confortare, itself from con- (“together”) + fortis (“strong”). To strengthen, to give or add strength to. This project is an investigation that revolves around this central theme; or rather, around the possibility of its anti-practice (discomfort). By challenging the idea of all-pervading comfort, it explores an alternative approach to well-being through carefully constructed discomfort and its subsequent mitigation— “as a form of hedonistic enjoyment”, as hypothesized by the French philosopher Jacques Pezeu-Massabuau.

With the premise of (dis)comfort as museum, the program contemplates a natural evolution from the Waste Isolation Site Marker Project presented in the following chapter, weaving together its elements of inconvenience with an alternative model for contemporary life. The possibility of discomfort is worked into a systemic environment as an element intentionally introduced or left out. The idea of monolith gives way to a lightweight concrete shell in the city, under which both colonization and intrusion are welcomed rather than denied.

Cisterns floor plan.

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arch out loud

Anastasiia Vitynska

Infrastructure/Competition

October 2017

Ominous

Introduction

An international open ideas competition, “Nuclear: Landmarker For A Waste Isolation Site” was a design challenge for a marker system to deter inadvertent human intrusion into a transuranic nuclear waste disposal site. Considering that the decay process can last millenia before the risks of its release are mitigated, the challenge in question is to conceive a marker system that can reliably communicate the potential danger for 10.000 years.

Reference studies were also provided, among which the “SANDIA Report: Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant”, which forms the theoretical basis that informs the conceptual, technological, and spatial decisions taken in this project.

Diagram: Masterplan.

An outburst of black concrete spikes mark the center of the fallout zone, coinciding with the footprint of the Waste Isolation Site. In the immediate surroundings, as if by a shockwave that follows the impact of the center, slanted pyramids spread out centrifugally in eight cardinal directions.

In each macroarea, made of local caliche, one giant pyramid stands out. Its outward inclination allows for a passerby to climb and catch a view of the entire site. The spaces in between and outside these areas are formed by a prismatic landscape that hinders the navigation of the area. Moreover, it denies the installation of parassitic structures.

Navigation of the site —scarcely allowed by a flat surface of 0.4m offset from each pyramid— is designed in such a way that potential intruders would find redundant warnings and information as they proceed toward the center.

Redundancy, discomfort, unease are the objectives that give shape to the architecture of the center. A massive, full-black landscape in the desert creates an unpleasant concentration of heat, and a catacomb-like interior with inward protrusions add to the overall experience of unreceptiveness. The message is therefore delivered both in writing and in design: an ominous presence lurks underneath.

Concept

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Cross section: corridor of entry to the Waste Isolation Plant.

Roof plan: Corridor of entry to the Waste Isolation Plant.

Closing notes

In addition to the images presented in this portfolio, I’m used to sketching (by hand or virtually) and making physical models as part of the design process.

For this portfolio, my main workflow consisted of using AutoCAD for drafting, Adobe Illustrator for setting lineweights and colors, Adobe Photoshop for retouches, Adobe Indesign for page layout, and Rhinoceros for modelling/rendering. That being said, I can quickly adapt to any other system that you might be using — I’m always drawing myself away from my comfort zone, experimenting with new workflows and technologies.

This CV+Portfolio is presented in English. However, I’m also fully proficient in French, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, and Spanish, and I’m confident in my ability to use any of these languages fluently without drawbacks.

Additional references or projects can also be furnished upon request. Thank you for your time and attention,

Eren Gazioglu