IND [Inter.National.Design] + Powerhouse Company in collaboration with ABT have won the Çanakkale Antenna Tower International Competition, near the city of Çanakkale in western Turkey.

For the competition, eight international teams where shortlisted to design a 100-meter tall Observation and Broadcast Tower for the historic city of Çanakkale. As stated by the competition brief, “competitors are strongly recommended to consider the technological requirements of the broadcasting tower and recreational potentials of a public entity with equal emphasis.”

Once complete, the forested hilltop site will be transformed into a public destination, offering exhibition spaces, recreational facilities and observation decks, in addition to an “iconic antenna tower.”

The design of the new Çanakkale Antenna Tower resolves these paradoxes by uniting all the different functions and spatial requirement into one spatial gesture. A path that loops around the site creates a stunning close-up experience of the forest and offers panoramic views in all directions. It merges into the visitors center that soars over the trees offering breathtaking views over the city and the forest, before returning to the top of the hill, where it shoots off into the sky.

The path is detached in height from the ground, liberating the space on the hilltop and allowing the forest to complete itself into a continuous and uninterrupted landscape. Meanwhile, by placing the path at the external site boundaries, a generous garden is liberated into the interior of the area.

At the brink of the 21st century we are entering a new chapter of modernization. Pure functionality is not enough anymore. Comfort and emotional experience have become more dominant drivers for quality than for technical endeavor. We also have become more aware of the problematic consequences of our hunger for non-renewable resources.

The 21st century offers us the chance to rethink the integration of technology and nature into new experiences and identities. The Çanakkale Antenna project offers us a number of interesting paradoxes: how do we enhance the experience of nature with the addition of technology? How do we create a visitors’ experience using the appealing and spectacular heights of the antenna tower, while protecting the visitors from the hazards of the transmitters’ radiations? How do we design an icon that gathers all the qualities of the site and experience them into a comprehensive whole? And how do we integrate the unique local qualities of Çanakkale and the universal symbol of a totem into an attractive experience?

The design clearly separates the visitors center from the antenna tower. In this way, it eliminates any radiation hazard for the visitors and the workers at the visitors center. At the same time, people can enjoy the amazing feeling of rising up through the tree tops and soaring over the trees into a platform of 360 degrees views, including seeing the antenna as part of the landscape. The antenna tower thus remains very simple and clean, while being very adaptable for future changes in technology. By keeping the technical rooms close to the tower and the road, the functionality of the antenna tower is uncompromised by the visitors center.

The antenna tower is formed by joining the two vertical paths, creating a gracious gateway under which the visitors enter the premises. This gesture creates a strong visual identity; an iconic appearance from afar that is transformed into an elaborate scenic experience when up close. Its architecture aims for technological functionality that maximizes through its gestures the reading of the inherent diverse landscape features.

Located at the top of a hill with breath taking views of the Dardanelles, the project consolidates existing telecommunication towers into one and creates a public park enriched withviewing platforms, a visitor centre and a restaurant.

It has become a commonplace situation to find around the world a collection of telecommunication towers on top of hills. Besides the visual impacts of the multiple towers the current standard procedure also brings with it erosion, landscape fragmentation, destruction of habitats and the loss of interests of nature loversin those usually precious locations. The impact of such infrastructure has in the landscape has been received worldwide with passivity, as if nothing could be done since we all need to be connected to internet, radio and tv at all times regardless of its environmental and social costs.

The brief of this international competition asked to challenge that position. It asked participants to come up with an elegant, environmentally conscious and economically viable solution that not only improved the physical aspects of the broadcasting infrastructure by consolidating the collections of several towers into a single tower but also asked to open up this infrastructure-only program into a public space location by combining it with recreational uses such an exhibition area, a visitor centre and a restaurant. The brief suggested to design this iconic tower involving all programs in one formal gesture.

After failing to achieve a formal result that was also compatible with the environment due to its overloaded formal needs our team decided to explore a different direction that did not literally respond to the brief. With the advice of our telecommunication engineers to place the tower as far away as possible from the public program due to its hazardous radiations and the happy coincidence that the plot offer a peripheral belt due to the existence of an inner plot to be left untouched, we came up with the idea of anouterbinding viewing platform that would encircle the project.We then decided to locate the program at different points of the plot with the tower at the entrance and the public program facing the better views of the surroundings at the opposite end. The project would be then reunited formally by theouter band that offered break taking views of the Dardanelles. The loopwould deform itself in plan and section to conform a tall entrance canyon, a wide viewing terrace deck with the main public needs beneath it , an elevated narrow viaduct and finally the tower itself that appears to complete this ring from both ends. The formal result of the levitating outer ring with the tower in the background subtly accentuates the contours of the hills making infrastructure, landscape and architecture a place of dialogue and mutual enrichment.

The loop solution offered another feature, the creation of an internal garden where we could showcase indigenous flower vegetation and restore the eroded land with healthy soil and young forest trees. Rather than a domesticated landscape the garden appears to be a wild place blurring the distinction between the plot vegetation and the surrounding forest landscape. Its walking paths marked with local stones are rather suggestions than defined trajectories. Stone boulders as seating devices complete the landscape proposal.

The brief requested that the 100m tall tower would not deform more than 1 degree facing winds up to 160km/h. This has led the structural engineers to come up with a solution that would use structural façade elements ofsteel plates up to 40mm combined with internal stiffeners. In turn the tower would be built out of modules to be assembled on site. The entire project finishing material is corten steel. This option offered a more subtle binding of the project to the natural colours of the landscape, also changing in tone according to sun exposure and wind.

Team:
Architecture: IND [Inter.National.Design] & Powerhouse Company - Arman Akdoğan (IND), Felix Madrazo (IND), Nanne de Ru (PHC), Charles Bessard
Landscapedesign: Hugo Sánchez Paisaje, LoopDesign, Taller de Paisaje Entorno
Structure advice: INTAÇ & ABT BV
Electrical engineers: Küp Mühendislik LTD
Lighting consultancy: Ulrike Brandi, Benjamin Heine, Sarah Textor
Contractor: ÇakırInşaat. Talat Turan, BurakYurt 
Site supervision: Arman Akdoğan, Félix Madrazo. IND [Inter.National.Design]
Photography: Fernando Alda