Project Summary

Economic and retail appraisal for the Zorlu Centre, Istanbul

Llewelyn Davies Yeang Architects, London; HAS Mimarlik (Architects), Istanbul

Foreman Roberts
Savant International
Adams Kara Taylor

The Zorlu Centre is to be one of Istanbul�s most prestigious mixed-use developments in prime CBD (Levent) and is intended to be a major national landmark.

Llewelyn Davies Yeang, thought leaders in the rapidly evolving field of eco-design, together with partners HAS Mimarlik were invited by the project developers to take part in an international competition to masterplan the combined residential-commercial scheme.

Ken Yeang at LDY appointed dq|dx as sub-consultants to carry out both the economic appraisal of the scheme as well as to prepare the retail strategy for the project.

"This was an assignment with two distinct elements," says Adil Khan, Director of Investment and Research at DQDX. "The first was a detailed economic and financial appraisal to assess the commercial viability of the LDY design and was therefore highly quantitative and grounded in economic theory. The second strand, relating to the proposed retailed strategy was no less commercially focussed, but also required a strong accent on innovation. In other words, our brief was to develop a retail proposition at Zorlu which was genuinely different from existing provision in Istanbul, responded to consumer demand and would be able to sustain itself as a market leading asset in the long-term."

The Zorlu Centre target completion date is 2010 when Istanbul becomes European Capital of Culture.