Apple wins supreme engineering award for glass lantern store in Turkey

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zorlustore2
The glass lantern Apple Store at Zorlu Center in Istanbul. Photo: Apple

 

Apple has won another architectural award for the innovative glass engineering used to create its impossibly perfect glass lantern store in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Apple Store at the Zorlu Center in Turkey took home the Supreme award for structural engineering excellence from this year’s Structural Awards, and was also honored for its excellence in structural design for a retail building.

Longtime Apple architect Forester + Partners created the store, with Eckersley O’Callaghan as the structural engineer behind the beautiful cube that is made of four panels of glass 10 meters long by 3 meters high. Unlike the iconic Apple Store on Fifth Ave, the Turkish Lantern is completely absent of fixings that keep the glass panels in place because Foster seamlessly joined them on site with structural silicone.

The end result is a completely smooth and clear glass box with an innovative roof made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic that also improves the seismic performance of the structure. The attention to detail and minimalist design is classic Apple, and according to the judges, it takes glass technology to a new dimension.

“The judges found this to be a supreme example of collaboration between engineer and fabricator to achieve an outstanding, architecturally minimalist structure. The use of single panes of toughened laminated glass to support a lightweight ultra-thin CFRP roof without connections other than structural silicone, takes structural glass technology into a new dimension. A project where only engineering excellence and attention to detail can produce a result of such simplicity and purity of expression.”

The Zorlu Apple Store boasts 20,000 square feet of retail space below the glass cube that was the first Apple Store in Turkey when it opened earlier this year. A second store has already opened nearby in Istanbul’s Akasya mall.

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