CommonLab
İzmir Sustainability Center (S-Hub)
Public, Mixed-Use
Type: Public, Mixed-Use / Status: Competition Entry / Location: Izmir, Türkiye / Year: 2023 / GFA: 7.600 m2
Architect: CommonLab
Project Team: Aslı Aydın, Derya Ertan, Tuğçe Nur Coşkun, Tansu Dinçer (Structural Engineer)
Consultants: Göknur Gülcü, Necdet Tunalı, Caner Gürlek
What Does Sustainability Mean Today?
Buildings and the construction sector are responsible for significant carbon emissions, waste production, and raw material consumption. Today, 40% of global energy-related carbon emissions are linked to buildings and construction. Construction and demolition waste, which includes materials such as concrete, metal, timber, glass, and plastic, accounts for 35% of all waste generated in the EU and 40% of solid waste in the United States. As the climate crisis accelerates, the building sector holds major responsibility, and also significant potential, in enabling the transformation now required in linear patterns of consumption and in limiting the impacts of the crisis. Existing data shows that a substantial share of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation begins long before a building comes into use, starting with the extraction of raw materials from nature, continuing through linear systems of material production and supply, and extending into demolition, which also contributes significantly to waste and emissions. For a truly sustainable building and construction sector, transformation must begin much earlier than the reduction of operational emissions. It requires a fundamental shift in the way we relate to nature. The current system, described by Jason Moore as one based on “cheap nature,” in which nature is separated from human life and treated as a resource to be exploited without paying its true cost, is no longer viable. As natural limits are reached and the climate crisis approaches irreversible thresholds, the era of cheap extraction is coming to an unavoidable end.
The first phase of the Sustainability Center competition is approached as a research phase that investigates what sustainable architecture and construction should mean today, and how these principles and standards can be translated into architectural design, space, and building systems. At this stage, the project is conceived primarily as a research process, focusing more on inquiry than on a fixed result. The intention is to test sustainable building principles through this project, so that they can later be adapted, scaled, and transferred to other contexts. As part of defining these sustainability standards, circular design and construction processes, as well as material use from different contexts around the world, have been examined through both theoretical frameworks and built examples. The extraction and processing of concrete, the most widely used construction material, and cement, its primary binding component, have been studied in order to make visible their destructive impacts on the climate crisis, the depletion of natural resources, and the health of both nearby communities and workers involved in these processes. The research makes clear that, given its impact on the climate crisis, architecture and the construction sector must undergo an urgent paradigm shift.
The Sustainability Center in İzmir, Turkey, located on a waterfront site, serves as a living laboratory for testing regenerative building principles on a regional scale. It aims to explore using locally sourced, bio-based regenerative materials in design and construction, and replicating them for broader application in future projects. The Sustainability Center is planned as a research and learning hub supporting collective, hands-on, experimental methods. The center includes research laboratories, shared and private workspaces, conference rooms, a library, a communal kitchen, a cafeteria, material laboratories for renewable materials research and applications, workshops, a repair space, terraces, rooftop gardens, and farming areas. The architectural concept is based on modular, prefabricated elements that enable flexible planning and program adaptations. It follows a Building Kit approach, allowing materials, products, and components to be accessed, repaired, removed, or replaced without damaging other parts of the structure. The building is designed with simple disassembly principles and connection details, ensuring it can be dismantled at the end of its life cycle rather than demolished, supporting reuse and recycling.
Building components and materials from the existing buildings have been incorporated into the new building. Containers previously used as storage and roofing materials have been repurposed and reused as second-hand materials and integrated into the project, adopting the concepts of “urban mining” and “the building as a material bank.”
The building’s main components, including its structural system, are proposed in wood for environmental and architectural reasons. Wood is a renewable material that can be reused at the end of its life cycle, helping to reduce CO2 emissions from new construction. This project will be a testing ground and promote the use of engineered wood, which has not yet been widely applied in Turkey, along with other natural building materials such as compressed earth and straw bale, to encourage broader adoption. The initiative aims to support sustainable forests, wood harvesting, and the growth of the local wood value and supply chains. In the S-Hub workshop, excavated soil will be used to create compressed earth blocks to be used in the collective construction of the space, enabling hands-on learning and material experimentation.
The project seeks to avoid unnecessary construction by optimizing the program. To minimize excavation, a partial basement level has been designed. Soil excavated during construction will be used to create compressed earth blocks, which will be used for constructing workshop spaces. The indoor climate will be improved by using non-toxic natural materials such as wood, straw, and earth, combined with natural ventilation to regulate humidity and temperature, reducing energy consumption.
