Ted Ankara College, High School in Yumrubel Campus
TED Ankara College is the first school established by a private foundation in Turkey. In terms of scale and student population, TED Ankara College is the largest school (with about a total of 6000 students) in Europe, probably in the world, providing preliminary education from 6 to 18 year-old children.
The school used to occupy a cluster of buildings, forming its own neighborhood, at the city center. From the early 1990s onwards, neither the buildings nor the whole complex was sufficient to fulfill the requirements of the student population. Thus, the TED Ankara College Foundation administration made a critical decision to move the school from downtown to a neighborhood, not far away from the city center. This was followed by the announcement of an Invited National Competition for designing the campus and the buildings. The competition resulted in 1999 and the design of Semra Uygur and Ozcan Uygur won the 1st prize.
We thought that it was wrong to tear the education apart from the city life since there was a mutual relationship between them. The city was living with the college and the college was living with the city. So we thought to move the city also along with the school... Metaphorically, of course. To move the relations, the emotions...
The new Campus is located near the southern village Ta?p?nar on a total area of 310,000m2. The vast lands of the Middle East Technical University surround the Campus on all sides. There is a forest on the eastern side of the Campus. Having a total building floor area of 141,000 m2, the complex consists of a Kindergarten (3,200m2), Primary School grades 1-5 (26,000m2), Primary School grades 6-8 (23,000m2), High School (22,000m2), Foundation Administrative Building (6,000m2), Sports Facilities (27,000m2), Art Center (21,000m2), Central Cafeteria with Science Center (7,000m2), Cultural and Conventional Center (15,000m2), Social Center, Lodgings for the staff and the buildings for technical services.
Construction of the High School was completed in August 2003. Other parts of the educational complex were completed in mid-2004. As of today, construction of the Administrative Building and the Annex Buildings for the kindergarten still continue. The school has largely been moved to the new Campus where education started in Primary and High Schools in early autumn 2004.
TED Ankara College High School
What is education? What kind of a process is it? We believe that modern education occurs in other spaces than the classrooms. This assumption shaped our design. It was a fiction of the city that we tried to form. The Campus was handled as a simulation of the city life with its streets, squares, social activities and all the interaction it offers. Like the city, the real education occurs in these common spaces. The complexity of city life together with the fluidity and the dynamism of the human movement generate the interaction, to form what we call the City Culture.
The High School (22,000m2), like all the other buildings in the Campus, has a pure functional spatial organization. 5 Classrooms define a Cluster, and 4 Clusters form a grade. All the hierarchy is structured into the Street where the common facilities for the clusters and the grades are joined to. The conceptual attitude goes on for the materials also... All the elements of the building and details were exhibited with their pure existence. Exposed concrete was used in its most modest form with perfect harmony with the other complementary material like brick and wood. Pipes and cables are all naked, to take part in the education process; the education process that has no obscurities.
* TED; Abbreviation for Turk Egitim Dernegi (Turkish Education Association)