With Lines of Memories, Gettysburg National Military Park meets the Appalachian Trail with an almost Japanese minimalist sensibility. All kinds of memorials and cemeteries are staggered throughout the peninsula to commemorate different battles and the dead from six nations.

The idea is to link all of the battlefields with walking paths, to help shift the common act of driving up to a historical site to take a picture without experiencing sincere feelings about the historic battle due to antiquated design.

Related: Gorgeous green-roofed Ostim Eco Park is an incubator for clean tech in Turkey

ONZ Architects and friends sink the walking trails, fill them with low-impact gravel and create tasteful site lines with strips of weathered steel that also contrasts beautifully with the verdant green landscape. They then plant wildflowers in ceremonial spaces, creating a soft and gentle space for visitors.

Visitors almost literally melt into the background, creating a tangible, physical connection with the Earth, a connection that will become, one hopes, the catalyst for some kind of spiritual recognition at least.

By taking multiple days to explore the various memorials scattered throughout a series of different ecological zones, a healing takes place, like a pilgrimage to other holy or spiritually significant sites. This is made possible by the design team’s signs and posts that help to direct the experience.

The design strives for such poetic elements as acoustic and visual silence – both useful whilst communing with nature, and it calls for the visitor to leave everything else behind so that they can be completely present in what amounts to a sacred experience.

To walk the pastures, meadows, forests, the hills and the valley, to actually walk the distance and brave the elements, is to better identify with the scale of sacrifice, and the tremendous courage and resilience shown by men (and women, to be sure!) on all sides of the war.

Lines of Memories is the result of a collaborative effort between ONZ Architects, MDesign, LOLA landscape architects and 24H Architecture. Together they recently won second prize in the Gallipoli Peninsula Historical Natural Park Competition.

We sure hope this thoughtful design will come to life.

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ONZ Architects is one of a small handful of architectural firms in Turkey and the region that prioritizes efficient use of resources and spacious, healthy green environments without compromising contemporary design.

Invited to participate in a restricted competition to design the Ostim Eco Park, which will be constructed in a planned industrial region of Ankara, ONZ says the research and technology hub is expected “to promote sector stakeholders to compete in a global level and attain a position where they would export to the world new energy and environment technologies.” 

Such an environment requires a great deal of light and open space in an aesthetically-pleasing natural environment, because inspiration rarely strikes in dark, cloistered rooms. It is equally essential that the design allows for people to cross each other’s paths, strike up conversation, stimulate new thinking.

ONZ Architects have accounted for all of these requirements with an exquisite design comprised of a series of terraced, green-roofed buildings tucked into the hillside that host offices, conference and workshop spaces.

Adjacent to this is a low-lying building wrapped in a glass façade; the main, landmark structure on the site, it has at its nucleus a massive collaboration area called the red hall, where people can meet informally, eat at the cafeteria, and exchange ideas.

There is also a modular amphitheater that can be used for both large and small functions thanks to a system of room dividers that cut up the space when necessary.

Any facility that aims to generate a new stream of green, efficient materials and technology better walk the talk. ONZ Architects understands this better than anyone, which is why they included a plethora of strategies to reduce energy consumption and water use, and limit the project’s overall environmental impact.

When daylighting is not possible, though use of glass in both the terraced buildings and the main hall ensure plenty of it, interior lighting mimics natural light, while light sensors embedded on the building’s façade help to energy waste.

Solar shading on the west-facing terrace buildings decrease excess thermal gain and sliding mesh panels on the southern façade serve the same function, givingoccupants plenty of control over their own comfort. Offices are wedged between two corridor spaces that promote natural ventilation and create a greenhouse affect in winter, further slashing energy requirements.

Since water is scarce everywhere in the Middle East and ought to be used sparingly, ONZ Architects has incorporated a rainwater harvesting system and also propose to recycle grey water as much as possible.

The design team also recommends a hybrid solar and geothermal system to keep the building warm in winter and cool in summer.

Finally, green roofs not only produce a natural, continuous landscape, but also help to mitigate the heat island affect and monitor air quality, which ensures a fresh, pollution-free working environment conducive to the kind of ecologically sensible technological revolution the Ostim Eco-Park is expected to produce.

:: ONZ Architects

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Onat Öktem, Ziya Imren and Zeynep Öktem are among the most exciting eco-minded architects working in Turkey, and Bird’s Nest is also among their most unique projects. Eschewing the bigger is better thought pattern, this solar-powered accessory dwelling “perches” on existing buildings to create extra space.

Albeit designed as a music room for schools that lack the space and appropriate insulation to provide budding musicians with an inspiring place to cultivate their musical genius, Bird’s Nest attaches to the roof of just about any existing building.

A small structure with a sloped roof designed to harvest rainwater and prevent harmful runoff in urban environments, the nest could also be used to provide housing for homeless citizens, studio space for other artists, or a little accessory dwelling for guests.

A modular structure that ensures flexibility, the Bird’s Nest boasts numerous sustainability features to mitigate its environmental footprint.

Rooftop solar panels are optimized for maximum solar energy absorption, but occupants won’t require a great deal of energy in the first place thanks to passive design interventions that makes use of natural daylight to illuminate the interior throughout the day, and solar gain to limit the need for mechanical heating and cooling.

A mechanical skylight, for example, permits diffused light to permeate the interior, and interacts with cutouts on either end of the small “parasitic” pod to flush air throughout.

These photovoltaic panels are also used to heat the interior and purify collected rainwater. This in turn is used to irrigate a small rooftop garden that improves air quality and creates a healthy green aesthetic – particularly for urbanites.

If you haven’t been following ONZ Architects’s work, take a look at their striking eco-mosque, which one the Best Freestanding Religious Structure in the Faith in Place competition.

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