Looking at REX’s Vakko Fashion Center in Istanbul

Structure: Vakko Fashion Center and Power Media Center

Architect: REX Architecture, the Manhattan-based firm of Joshua Prince-Ramus — former partner of architecture star Rem Koolhaas at his Office for Metropolitan Architecture.

Clients: Vakko and Power Media

Location: Istanbul, Turkey

History: Cem Hakko, CEO of Vakko and Power Media, hired REX to build the company headquarters in 2008, when he was visiting New York for fashion week. Hakko told the firm that it had about a year to complete the project. Taking an adaptive reuse approach, the group applied plans for a canceled project at the California Institute of Technology to an abandoned skeleton in Istanbul — an unfinished hotel that had been unoccupied for 20 years. Coincidentally, the U-shaped skeleton of the site matched the dimensions of the canceled project, which sped up the process. Caltech’s loss became Vakko and Power Media’s gain, allowing for construction to begin a staggering four days after the commission was finalized in February 2008. By March 2009, REX had fulfilled Hakko’s wishes: most of the structure was complete. Vakko held the building’s opening ceremony in January 2010, and the building took its place as one of the gems of contemporary architecture in Istanbul.

Cost: Confidential

Purpose: To serve as headquarters of Vakko, a luxury Turkish fashion retailer that creates womenswear, menswear, shoes, and more, as well as for Power Media, tantamount to Turkey’s MTV.

Features: The Vakko Fashion and Power Media Center — winner of the 2011 Wallpaper magazine Design Award for Best Workspace — is actually two structurally independent components. It is comprised of a three-story, rectangular doughnut-shaped building, dubbed “the Ring,” that holds regular office space. This surrounds a taller, six-floor tower made from a stack of angled steel boxes, called “the Showcase,” which houses executive offices, showrooms, an auditorium, and meeting rooms. Prince-Ramus repurposed the subterranean spaces originally intended to function as hotel’s parking lot into radio and television studios for Power Media.

The structures’ two different surfaces make for an interesting contrast. The glass façade on the Ring consists of window panes slumped with structural Xs to increase strength, while the exterior of the Showcase is made of mirror-glass, giving its interior a kaleidoscope effect.

via Looking at REX’s Vakko Fashion Center in Istanbul – ARTINFO.com.