IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 51

Technology’s blessing is its curse: These
days, we expect even our interiors to entertain
us, mainlining into the senses like a video game.
The dialogue between the virtual and the real
cuts both ways, as interior environments depicted
online are rendered with increasing verisimilitude.
Yet the gaming experience itself is another matter
entirely, primarily taking place inside the mind
and the monitor. Competing against opponents
who aren’t even in the same room—or the
same country, for that matter—gamers dive
so deep into their virtual worlds that the design
of their physical surroundings is generally
an afterthought, with design elements limited
to fancy chairs with surround-sound audio
and other “reality”-enhancing accouterments.
But a suite of gaming rooms in a new Istanbul
residential tower suggests that the paradigm
is shifting. Tasked with converting a windowless
basement space into a quartet of console
playrooms, local talent Alper Böler conceived
a design that suggests Chesterfield sofas on speed.
Kitted out with oversize flat-screens, the
monolithically tufted interior is furnished with
a triple tier of telescoping benches, mounted on
wheels and rails. When closed, they form roomwide banks of upright seating; drawn out, they
become chaise longues embedded with tablelike
surfaces for drinks. The cushioned armatures
not only nod cheekily to Victorian-era gentleman’s
library, but also to bleacher-style gymnasium
seating and the padded walls of an insane asylum.
“I wanted to echo Plato’s Allegory of the Cave,” says
Böler, who asides that the word “sofa” has Turkish
roots, deriving from the Arabic suffa.

The clubby lairs are among a host of amenities
offered in Turkish real-estate company Nef’s
experimental Foldhome development. Billing itself
as a “lifestyle laboratory,” Nef has tapped firms
like SOM, Studio Dror, and Raw Edges to redesign
the experience of urban apartment living. In the
case of Foldhome, tenants get a compact,
650-square-foot flat as well as pay-per-use access
to communal spaces that can be reserved for
private enjoyment: yoga studios, an observatory,
a humidor-equipped cocktail den, and much more.
While formulating the concept, the company
asked its target clientele what dream amenities
they’d want in their home if money and square
footage were no object. A gaming room was the
most popular response from students, yuppies,
and families with young children. “PlayStation
is a huge trend, especially among young men,”
says Nef founder Erden Timur. (Böler himself is
a devotee of Portal and Call of Duty.) The developer
suspects that the gaming industry’s increasingly
nuanced imitation of real life is replacing the
physical, outdoor play that’s already marginalized
in city living.
The conflation of high-concept and convertibility
evident here is a hallmark of Böler’s creative
economy. He’s renowned for pared-down
multifunctional products like a bookcase equipped
with shelves that slide out to become serving
trays, a couch with cushions that can transform
into a kid’s fort, and Sema, a café table that doubles
as a magazine rack. Similarly, Böler’s gaming-room
prototype is designed to adapt to the floor plates
of future developments. So modular is the concept
that it’s tempting to re-imagine the template
in the form of an intimate theater, the smoking
room of a swank hotel, a lounge for some fashionforward tech company—or even a think tank,
perhaps, in the offices of a video-game developer.
perspective

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