Muğla Social, Cultural and Administrative Services Building,
Muğla 2026 | Selim Atak, Talip Doğu Ayan, Cansen Molva, Rahmi Hızarcıoğlu
/ Starting Point
Rather than making a radical statement or foregrounding the building as an object, the proposal primarily seeks to offer spaces for everyday life and to quietly become a part of the city centre. In other words, the building seeks to reflect its own time without asserting itself over the surrounding urban fabric, whose architecture reveals the changing aesthetic values of different periods and the continuity of the city’s development. In spatial terms, the building can be described as a box elevated on four functional legs, freeing the ground floor for public use.
/ Proposal
Following the demolition of the existing building, the proposal re-establishes the street edges by aligning its facades with the plot’s building lines. In doing so, it preserves the existing street profile and maintains a sense of continuity in the city’s urban memory.
The southeast corner of the site, facing the multi-storey car park and the primary school, accommodates the building’s service spaces. A deliberate gap separates the building from its neighbour, reflecting their different uses while bringing shadow and depth to the ground floor. Together, these decisions shape a clear rectangular footprint, bringing the different spatial and contextual requirements together within a simple and coherent geometry.
a - The defined building footprint is organised around a clear distinction between served and service spaces. The eastern wing forms the building’s service zone, bringing together vertical circulation, fire escapes, wet areas and storage within a single, compact strip.
b - At ground level, the courtyard draws on the traditional “hayat” the shared open space at the heart of domestic life in vernacular architecture. Reinterpreted here as a public courtyard, it opens the building to the street and creates a more fluid relationship between the building and the ground.
Different functions are placed at its four corners, while a circular amphitheatre occupies the centre of this loosely defined courtyard. Rather than prescribing a fixed use, the space is intended to encourage social interaction and evolve through the ways in which people occupy and use it.
c - Above the amphitheatre, the focal point of the courtyard, a skylight is introduced as a lantern-like structure framing the sky. Its geometry is designed so that, when looking upwards from within the building, the surrounding buildings remain outside the field of view.
At its centre, the frame reveals an ever-changing composition a “sky landscape” shaped by light, clouds and time. The surrounding floor surfaces act as a passe-partout, completing the frame and giving the structure its final conical/pyramidal form.
/ Floor Plans
G - The loosely defined edges of the courtyard are given form by the entrance, cafeteria, bookshop and service units. Cobblestone paving extends continuously from the site into the ground floor, allowing the courtyard to read as a natural continuation of the street a shaded space within the city.
1 - The library is placed on the first floor, where it can comfortably accommodate the higher flow of visitors it is expected to attract. The plan is organised around the digital library at its centre, with three study rooms positioned along the northern facade.The study rooms are separated by movable partitions, allowing them to be combined or divided to accommodate different group sizes and uses as needed.
2 - The second floor houses the administrative offices, with the department head’s office and meeting room positioned along the northern facade. The main workspace supports both individual and collaborative work, while allowing for smaller rooms to be created as needed.
3 - The top floor brings together a 60-seat seminar and event hall and an 80-seat multipurpose hall, both served by a shared foyer. Movable partitions between the multipurpose hall and the foyer allow the two spaces to become one when needed, increasing the overall capacity to approximately 150 people.
R - The roof is conceived as an open terrace, with the wall of the circulation core serving as a projection screen. Seating is arranged along the east–west axis to form an open-air cinema, where views towards Masa Dağı and the city spreading across its foothills become part of the experience.
/ Elevation
A walk through the city centre reveals an irregular rhythm of facades shaped by buildings from different periods a condition that is by no means unique to Muğla. In keeping with the initial approach of the design, the building does not seek to stand out from this complexity, but instead adds its own rhythm to it. A travertine-clad band rising from ground level to +0.40 m forms a continuous plinth, upon which the main volume rests as a simple white mass. The facade is kept deliberately simple, defined by the horizontal lines of the floor slabs and the vertical rhythm of the window openings.
Responding to Muğla’s climate, deep walls and recessed windows create a strong interplay of light and shadow across the facade while controlling daylight within the interior. This depth is also put to use inside the building, forming niches and integrated spaces for storage, heating and other services.