Yalikavak Marina Complex by Emre Arolat Architects

Emre Arolat Architects has extended the existing marina complex in Yalikavak, Turkey by adding a series of new facilities. The project was developed in stages, with the first stage incorporating retail, restaurants, as well as mechanical units needed for the yachts docking in the marina.

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

From Emre Arolat Architects

Yalikavak is one of the lagoons on the southwestern coast of Turkey, which is becoming a popular destination for blue voyages along the Turkish Riviera. Unlike its provincial center Bodrum, which has faced a building boom in 1980s with the increase of touristic activities, Yalikavak is still a relatively calm, smaller scale settlement with its natural landscape.

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

The project for the extension of the existing marina complex for the use of middle-upper class in Yalikavak has the burden of welcoming a big investment in this area that will also bring its own facilities. The “island” part of Yalıkavak Marina, which is the first phase of the complex, is planned to house retail, restaurants, beach-pool club, sanitary and mechanical units for needs of mega yachts that will dock in the marina.

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

The main motivation for the design of the “island” was to search for the possibility to reconcile the needs of ‘outcomers’ with the genius loci of Yalikavak as a Mediterranean settlement.

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Instead of a generic design that can easily become an alienated object for this place, an architecture derived from the local character, interpreted as composition of masses with different heights, merging with landscape and with the sea has emerged as a way to be integrated with the place.

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

Alongside the masses that follows a grid structure in plan, atypical additions such as a linear wall and a tower accompanies the complex. Following the ancient cities like Kos, Rhodes and Siena, cladded with one material, travertine is used to render the whole complex which is regarding itself as a new-comer, but one of a familiar, not a hard-shell foreigner.

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At the second and third phases of the complex, shopping units are designed along the shore of the marina, continuing the Mediterranean aura with wide overhangs creating a continuous shaded path, that sometimes turns into a colonnade alongside the shops.

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All the shops are fragmented in planning and overhangs are designed in different levels overlapping each other in order to keep the building scale. The shops reside as glass volumes along the composition of vertical and horizontal planes of travertine stone.

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

The complex also includes a boutique hotel, customs office building, a spa and fitness, an office building, storages and a shipyard for winter maintenance.

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

Image © Emre Arolat Architects

Facts:
Architects: Emre Arolat Architects
Location: 48000 Bodrum, Turkey
Design Team: İbrahim Anıl Biçer, Deniz Kösemen, Makbule Yıldırım, Buket Katı
Responsible Architects: Emre Arolat, Gonca Paşolar, Rıfat Yılmaz, Leyla Kori
Area: 8200 m²
Project Year: 2013
Structural Project: Nodus Engineering
Mechanical Project: Beta Teknik
Electricity: Aykar Engineering
Infrastructure: Ekiz Proje
Photography: Emre Arolat Architects