MONO was designed and built on a 4293 sqm corner lot, reserved for industrial use in the zoning code, in the Sarnıç industry zone of Gaziemir, İzmir.

It has been a quick and preferred solution for architects to partition the mass in industrial buildings due to the functional requirements of office and production and differentiate the architectural expression of these partitions accordingly. This solution, justified on the grounds of budgetary constraints and directly reflected in the building’s expression, is almost perceived as typology, while the aesthetic and constructional problems that follow are ignored. Thus, the most important factor that triggered the design process was that the functional configuration, which defines the whole through the components being in direct relationships with each other, should find its counterpart in the architectural solution via a unified mass and expression. In other words, Mono's design seeks to answer the question of whether one can achieve elegance and unity in the design of industrial buildings with the restrictive budgets usually allocated for their construction.

The local building code specified that the ground level should be a meter above grade on the main roadside due to the slope of the land. This made it inevitable for us to use this side as the entrance façade for the office function. Therefore, the entry to the industrial function to be used by high-tonnage trucks had to be placed at the back of the lot. The production and office functions were unified by a single building skin, and the office units were placed behind the openings cut into this skin to provide them with natural light. On the upper floor, the facade is pushed back from the skin, and semi-open spaces conditioned via natural ventilation and shading to enrich the office function are produced.

The obligation to set the building 10 meters from the streets that define the corner has allowed us to propose a green buffer and parking in this area. The 1-meter difference in elevation, which we perceived as a disadvantage for access when we started the design, was evaluated as an advantage in the later stages because the green buffer zone that sloped to accommodate the level difference and shielded the office function also reinforced the perception of the building rising from a green base.