Concept design

Concept design, konsept tasarım in Turkish, is a project’s first answer to the question “what will this be, and why this way?” The site, the brief, climate, context and the client’s expectations are brought together, and from them come the project’s main idea, its massing and its spatial character. The details are not resolved yet, but the direction is set.

What this stage produces

Typical outputs are sketches, diagrams, rough massing models and reference images that convey atmosphere. Several options are often developed side by side and compared. The chosen idea is then dimensioned in the preliminary design and fully detailed in the construction drawings. A good concept guides the countless small decisions that follow; when a window size or a material is being debated, the answer is often hidden in the concept.

Visualizing a concept

At this stage an image does not need to be photographic; it only needs to convey the idea. Clay renders, massing images with simple materials, or studies of light and shadow do a lot of work here. We walk through the journey from idea to image in how to develop an architectural concept design.