Thesis Excerpt - Berk Oral

My name is Berk Oral, and I am a fifth-year International Honors student at Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture. With a GPA of 3.98, I rank among the top 3% of my major. Growing up in Turkey, Bulgaria, and Russia, I developed an acute sensitivity to the way architecture interacts with society and the environment— how spaces not only reflect but also shape the cultures that inhabit them. This understanding drives me to create designs that are flexible, adaptive, and deeply rooted in their context.

Whether it’s the contemplative simplicity of Pen & Perch in the Appalachian Mountains or the bold structural explorations in my thesis, Intersity, I strive to create architecture that challenges convention and responds to the ever-evolving needs of its dwellers. This portfolio encapsulates a process—an unfolding of ideas, where each project reflects a conversation between space, intent, and the ever-changing fabric of human experience.

Diffused Urban Framework

Inter-sity explores a new model of vertical urbanism, reimagining the relationship between structure and program. By pushing traditional servant functions outward into an expressive structural exoskeleton, the design opens expansive, flexible living spaces that remain perpetually served. The project challenges the conventions of urban living, offering a dynamic, adaptable framework that responds to the evolving needs of city dwellers. Through this approach, the thesis redefines the boundaries of both the city and the building itself. The work remains in progress, with completion expected by early May.

INTERSITY

static nor seamless, the tower registers patterns of inhabitation.

stacked ecosystem, where each layer adapts to its role.

envelope breathes, serves, and shapes life within.

Borrowing from the fractured logic of Manhattan’s skyline, Inter-sity stitches together fragments of the city into a continuous interior narrative—each floor a new neighborhood, each threshold a new street. Within the tower, programs collide like buildings in a dense block, creating moments of overlap, friction, and exchange.

Anchored by its core, the building breathes through its skin—an exoskeleton that binds fluid programs to structure, mediating space, surface, and the act of making.

From public to private, the tower thickens with intent— semi-public buffers ease transition, while rainwater and air flow down through atriums, sustaining plants and people.

Wind is broken by design—the fragmented envelope disperses force across its surface, reducing pressure, while calibrated openings track the sun’s path, drawing in winter light and shading against summer glare.

Floor slabs interlock with the exoskeleton, forming a structural dialogue between mass and frame. A secondary truss delicately threads between, anchoring GFRC panels to the tower’s bones—where enclosure is not applied, but assembled through tension and precision.

Through atriums that breathe, spaces that flow, and boundaries that blur, the tower invites connection. Community emerges not by instruction, but through the quiet choreography of proximity—a scaffold for shared life stretched vertically.