A cheese factory goes high-design in Turkey

In western Turkey, Istanbul-based firms Slash Architects and Arkizon Architects turned this simple cheese factory into high-minded architecture.

First profiled by Dezeen, the factory is located in a valley near the village of Afyon Tazlar, in Turkey's Afyonkarahisar Province, and is known as “The Farm of 38° 30°” based off its coordinates.

Rather than designing a straightforward factory, the architects hoped to elevate the building to showcase cheese making. The production spaces are arranged in an ellipse, surrounding an inner green courtyard. Visitors are invited to enter the courtyard through a large opening in the elliptical ring of the building.

Once inside the circle, you can view the cheese making happening within the factory through glass walls. The courtyard is covered by a canopy—which also forms the sloping roof for the rest of the building—and a circular patio offers space for tasting sessions.

Despite the glass walls, factory employees are allowed some privacy: slats of Cor-Ten steel, placed in front of the glass, serve as sun blinds and are designed to create shade and privacy. The outer walls of the factory, made of Afyon stone, are broken up by tall and thin windows offering views of the countryside. The architects designed the window openings to control the natural light allowed in specific production rooms.

For actual employees, they enter through a glazed main entrance into the factory, which opens to the sales department with the production room located behind. There’s also a staff doorway that leads to the changing rooms, as well as a walkway that wraps the internal courtyard.

That connection between employees inside the factory and visitors outside, in the courtyard, is crucial to the design: "The transparency of the facade lets us peek into the production spaces, while the staff animates the whole," the architects say.

Via: Dezeen