Firm： KOOP Architects

Type： Cultural › Religious Landscape + Planning › Public Park

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2013

SIZE： 300,000 sqft - 500,000 sqft

BUDGET： $100K - 500K

Babatepe is located in approximetly 6 km north-east of Kandıra, and it is the highest point of the area between “Şile” to “Karasu”. Akçakoca Bey ,who was born in second half of the 14th century, is one of the three most important head of raiders that extends the lands of Ottoman Empire at the begining of 15th century. Presumedly Akçakoca Bey, loyal fellow soldier of Ertuğrul Gazi and Osman Gazi, passed away at Babatepe in 1328. The mosque and the tomb that located in this place, became a center of attraction for the region. It becomes a place for the events of “Hıdırellez” and meeting point for surrounding villages.

Impressive location and nature of the site became a guiding light for us while working on the project which includes repairment of monument, landscape design and designing a new mosque. For the content of the project; removing all the structures and roads that surrounds the monument, integration of the monument and landscape, closing the roads to vehicle movement, designing a new mosque that more compatible with the spirit of the nature and site after demolishing the old one, and designing a observation platform that directs to the view of Blacksea, antique ports and endless forest ,were the main decisions.

The mosque is located on kiblah axis of the monument’s center, which is south. Enterence of the mosque is on monument level and comprise of ground, mezzanine, and because of the slope of topography, semi-basement floor.

Semi-Basement floor of the mosque built by masonary walls with “Kandıra” stone, with concrete base. Starting from ground floor, main body of the mosque built with chestnut tree wood, with çandı structure technique. Three layered laminated wood elements stabilize with “kurtboğazı” joints at the corners, and at the corner of the windows, stem bars stabilizes from floor to roof. Roof of the structure placed on two main trusses and roof ridge, covered with turkish style roof tiles.

Without any doubt, most challenging part of the project was design of the new mosque. With the literature and field stuies, discovering the construction technique of “Çandı” and synthesizing first period Ottoman religious structure typology with contemporary interpretation created our first design process.