Isfanbul shopping centre
designed by Görkem Volkan for GVDS, Istanbul, Turkey
Buildings and spaces, and architecture in general, are the sociological and cultural offsets of the society in which they are located. Before COVID-19 hit, shopping centres and retail areas were being transformed from retail spaces into recreational centres with larger food and beverage areas due to the effects of online shopping and to respond to our changing lifestyles. At GVDS, we focus greatly on large shopping centres, and since 2017 we have increasingly been involved in the renovation of existing shopping centres. In November 2019, as we started to transform the 10,000- m2 Isfanbul shopping centre into a food and beverage centre, we heard about the COVID-19 threat from very, very far away. We could never have guessed that it would end up changing our whole year, our lifestyle, habits and priorities. We are now trying to adapt and hoping to get out of this situation very soon.
The implementation of the transformation, which took about 3 months, was completed during lockdown, and Isfanbul AVM welcomed its first guests in July 2020.
Our architectural firm works hard to find the most beneficial and sustainable solution for each project and investor. When reviewing the whole process, I was surprised to see how the design shaped before COVID-19 fully responded to the needs that arose during the pandemic. Open food and beverage and retail areas, terraces that can be opened and closed, as well as green gardens were already part of the popular design approaches for shopping centres before the pandemic. The same goes for extensive walking areas to avoid overcrowding, different pedestrian circulation axes connected indirectly with each other through squares and also open-closed areas that can be easily divided into zones. All of these also respond to today’s needs.
For the finish of the metal substrates, the architects chose Anodic Brown AE20108000420.
