Article: Architectural Statement – Architect Cem Sorguç (CM Mimarlık),
Engineering Statement – Bahadır Özcihan, M.Sc. CE (Özcihan Mühendislik)
PROJECT NAME: Gemak Shipyard Administration Office
STRUCTURE CATEGORY: 1.b.(1)
START DATE: Design: 2017 - Construction: 2018
STATUS: Complete / 2020
CONSTRUCTION AREA: 3.240 m²
LOCATION: Altınova, Yalova
EMPLOYER / INVESTOR: Gemak Shipyard
MAIN CONTRACTOR AND STEEL CONTRACTOR: Gemak
Shipyard
STEEL ERECTION CONTRACTOR: Güçlü Çelik Endüstriyel Yapı San. Ve Tic. A.Ş.
STEEL TONNAGE: ~450 tonnes
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN: CM Mimarlık / Cem Sorguç,
Cüneyt Şentürk, Çiğdem Yalırsu, Tolga Yağlı, Deniz Gezgin
ENGINEERING: Özcihan Mühendislik
MECHANICAL DESIGN: Ente Mühendislik
ELECTRICAL DESIGN: Tasarım Proje
Further to the steel structure design competitions held by TUCSA biannually since 1997 in order to award successful steel structure design and applications by Turkish architects and engineers, 12th National Steel Structure Awards have been concluded in November 2020. The first place went to Gemak Shipyard Administration Office project.
ARCHITECTURAL STATEMENT
Gemak Shipyard in the southeast shore of Marmara Sea and at the entrance of Izmit Bay is located in an area where freighters and ships from all over the world come for maintenance and repair.
In the administration office designed in an area of intense paint and rasper works on steel material with metallic noises due to maintenance and repair works, the design was also affected by these inputs as well as the shipyard itself. The design went forward with answers to questions on how the use of materials, ship construction and ship elements can become structural elements for a stationary structure.
The structure has been separated into two sections and the circulation areas, services and wet areas have been articulated accordingly. In this articulation with fliers, one enters the floors through staircase landings. The staircase reaches open space after the third floor and the cafeteria at the top floor provides view of the whole shipyard as if one is looking down from a navigating bridge. The administration office provides view of the seaside, the ships, and workshops through a transparent façade. Interior space design is comprised of flexible and removable partitions. It is worth noting that no coating has been used in interior space surfaces unless necessary. This enables continuity of the construction and structural characteristics inside the building.
The administration office, although constructed to be an office space, makes reference to the surrounding industrial structures, cranes and lifts due to its location and relevant industry with its structural construct through directional sunblinds and inner façade. The idea of not including any elements not used by the industry and the bare aesthetics appears to be significant benchmarks in the design process of the structure. The structure as a whole has been designed and constructed as steel construction. There is no basement level in the building and the structure rises with the same footprint. With shallow foundation technology on the ground level, all structural elements rise rationally, and the structure completes itself. The structure sliding longitudinally in two sections provides a mass stability. Gemak Shipyard Administration Office is similar to a freighter docked at the port but ready to leave when necessary, making it one of the most beautiful examples of the idea of a finite structure.
ENGINEERING STATEMENT LOAD BEARING SYSTEM DEFINITION
The building has been designed in five floors (ground floor and four standard floors) and the load bearing system has been selected as steel construction. The distance between each axis is 6 meters in the longitudinal direction with 5.6 meters and 1.9 meters in the latitudinal direction. The footprint of the building is approximately 600 square meters. The floor height is 3.80 meters. The foundation system is foreseen as raft foundation slab and the foundation height has been determined as 70 centimetres further to the conducted analyses. The structural system has been designed as “Buildings in which seismic loads are jointly resisted by structural steel braced frames with eccentrically braced frames” (please refer to The Specification for Structures to be Built in Disaster Areas 2007, Table 2.5, 3.4.b) as detailed in the Specification for Structures to be Built in Disaster Areas dated 2007. Load bearing elements are I-section eccentrically braced frames with wide caps which follow the architectural design and located accordingly as per the structure behaviour in addition to structural steel columns and beams formed of I-sections with wide caps. Column cross-sections have been selected as HD 400x237 and HD 400x216 whilst the beam cross-sections have been selected as HE-B 260, HE-B 280, HE-B 340 and HE-B 360. The cross-sections of the eccentrically braced elements have been selected as HE-B 240. For the load bearing system slabs, composite slab system composed of corrugated steel sheet and reinforced concrete slab. The total thickness of the reinforced concrete slab has been selected as 15 centimetres and the secondary beam cross-section has been selected as IPE 270. In order to ensure diaphragm slab behaviour, headed studs with required intervals and configuration have been used for the transfer of in-plane and out-of-plane forces to the load bearing system.
TONNAGE
The total weight of the structural steel elements in the structural system of the building including the connection details is approximately 450 tonnes.
MISCELLANEOUS
The structure is in an area considered to be problematic in terms of soil engineering, close to the shore in Altınova (Yalova). Considering that most of the structural load is the load bearing system self-weight, the selection of the load bearing system as structural steel reduced the geotechnical risks (by reducing the structural loads and the requirement of lower soil strength) and deemed the soil improvement feasible.