Our pandemic resistant office design Ecotone has now been featured in Time magazine! You can read the article “The Future of Work” by Eloise Barry, which discusses the future of resilient and sustainable workspaces.

“Turkish architecture practice Salon Alper Derinboğaz made the learnings from the pandemic central to the design of Ecotone, an innovation center at Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul. When construction is completed in late 2023, the transitional space between teaching facilities and a professional academy will be “pandemic resistant,” says the architecture firm’s founder, Alper Derinboğaz, referring to the building’s partially open air design. Istanbul’s mild Mediterranean climate has allowed Derinboğaz to permeate a series of open co-working spaces with outdoor walkways, creating the kind of passive natural ventilation system that the World Health Organization says reduces the transmission risk of airborne viruses. Ecotone’s geothermal heating and cooling system is low emission, while the self-supporting structure—featuring columns resembling stalagmites and stalactites in caves—removes the need to lay intrusive foundations in the land. Fluid, glass-paneled walls and interior foliage allows for greater connection between workers inside the building and nature.”

“Developing innovative approaches to reducing the office building’s carbon footprint was a priority for Derinboğaz, who notes that the construction industry produces nearly 40% of global carbon emissions. “As architects we really need to find a new way of doing things,” he says. “That’s why we wanted the university’s innovation center to be innovative in its design.”