How a Villa Architectural Project Is Prepared in Turkey

Most of what a villa will cost, and how pleasant it will be to live in, is settled at the drawing board. The problems we run into on site (a wrong floor level, a column landing in the middle of the living room, a forgotten service shaft, a facade that doesn't match the permit) nearly always trace back to details the design never resolved. Here is the order in which a villa project is put together in Turkey, what to check at each stage, and what changes on the Black Sea coast around Şile and Ağva.

Start with the zoning status, not the sketches

Before an architect draws a line, get the plot's zoning status certificate (imar durumu) from the municipality. It tells you how much you can build and where:

• TAKS: the footprint ratio, meaning how much of the plot the building may cover.
• KAKS (emsal): the floor area ratio that caps total built area.
• Hmax and number of storeys.
• Setbacks from the road and from the side and rear boundaries.
• Plan notes: local rules on roof pitch, materials, basements and so on.

On a 1,000 m² plot with TAKS 0.20 and KAKS 0.40, the house can cover at most 200 m² of ground, and the countable floor area cannot exceed 400 m². Whether a basement, attic or balcony counts toward that figure is set by the Planned Areas Zoning Regulation under Zoning Law No. 3194 and by the local plan notes. Pin this down in the first meeting; losing square metres late in the design is frustrating.

Around Şile and Ağva we check three more things early: whether the plot borders forest land, whether it lies inside a village settlement area, and how close it is to the sea. Under Coastal Law No. 3621, nothing can be built in the first 50 m of the 100 m shore strip measured from the coastline boundary, and houses are not allowed in the second 50 m either. A plot sold as being right on the water can turn out to have a very small buildable area.

Reading the site and writing the brief

You need a topographic survey and a setting-out sketch (aplikasyon krokisi) from a licensed surveyor. A plan drawn without them tends to shift once it meets the ground, and on sloping land the level differences and the cut and fill volumes come straight from that survey.

The brief sounds obvious, yet it is usually rushed. How many people will live there? Year-round or summers only? Do guests stay often? Does an older relative need a ground-floor bedroom? How many cars? Is a pool planned? If the pool isn't placed in the first design, squeezing it in later between the setbacks and the drainage runs gets awkward.

There's a conflict I meet on almost every Şile plot. The sea view is to the north, the sun comes from the south, and the poyraz, the cold north-easterly, blows in straight off the water. Put the whole living room behind big north-facing glass and you get a room that's cold and windy for half the year. A better plan frames the view to the north but puts the daytime rooms and the main terrace facing south or south-east, with a sheltered entrance or windbreak on the north side.

Concept design

This is the architect's first proposal: site plan, floor plans, two to four elevations, at least one section and usually 3D views. It is the cheapest moment to change your mind. Moving a wall now takes a few hours of drawing. After the construction drawings it ripples through the structural, services and permit files, and once building starts it means breaking things out.

Before I sign off a concept I check that the stairs are genuinely comfortable (risers of roughly 16-18 cm), that each bedroom keeps a plain wall for wardrobes, that the kitchen has a short route to the car and the garden, and that there's a plant room for the boiler, water tank and booster pump. The plant room is the space most often forgotten.

Construction drawings

The approved concept becomes the drawing set used for the permit and on site. For a villa that usually means:

• Architectural drawings at scale, with sections, elevations, roof plan, door and window schedule, and stair and wet-room details.
• Structural design to the Turkish Building Earthquake Code (TBDY 2018). In reinforced concrete that typically means C30 or higher concrete with B420C rebar; in steel, S235, S275 or S355 grade sections.
• Mechanical: water supply, drainage, rainwater, heating and cooling, and gas if used.
• Electrical: power, lighting, earthing and low-voltage systems such as cameras, alarm and data.
• Thermal insulation calculation to TS 825.
• Where needed, landscape and retaining wall design. On sloping Şile plots the retaining wall is often an engineering job in its own right.

Foundation decisions rest on the soil investigation report. Picking a foundation type before the report arrives is guesswork.

The most common failure is coordination between disciplines. The architect draws an open-plan living room and the structural engineer drops a column into it. Or nobody allows a shaft for the soil stack, so the pipe ends up crammed into a dropped ceiling. Someone has to overlay every drawing and check them against each other. If nobody is given that job, it falls to the contractor on site, so decide at the start who does it.

The permit file

Drawings go to the municipality, or to the provincial special administration outside municipal boundaries. Expect to submit:

• Title deed record and zoning status certificate
• Setting-out sketch
• Architectural, structural, mechanical and electrical drawings
• Soil and foundation investigation report
• Thermal insulation design
• A contract with a licensed building inspection firm, required under Law No. 4708
• Chamber registration documents for each designer

Depending on the municipality and how complete the file is, the permit takes roughly 1-4 months. The energy performance certificate comes at the end, when you apply for the occupancy permit (iskan), not at the permit stage.

Design fees

Item	Approximate range, early 2026
Concept design	₺50,000-₺150,000
Full construction drawing set (architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical)	₺150,000-₺400,000
Project management and site supervision	Roughly 3-5% of construction cost

The ranges widen with the size of the villa, the difficulty of the site and the designer. The Chamber of Architects and the engineering chambers publish minimum fee schedules every year. If a quote is far below them, ask what has been left out.

Who signs the drawings?

In Turkey, architectural drawings must be signed by an architect registered with the Chamber of Architects, structural drawings by a civil engineer, mechanical by a mechanical engineer and electrical by an electrical engineer. Whoever signs carries the legal responsibility. Drawings produced in one office and submitted under someone else's signature break the rules and leave you with nobody accountable when something goes wrong.

Common questions

Can I build a ready-made villa design on my plot?

As a starting idea, yes. As it stands, no. It has to be adapted to your plot's zoning, slope, orientation and soil, the structure recalculated from your own soil report, and the set signed by licensed designers.

How long does the design stage take?

With an owner who decides quickly, concept design usually takes a few weeks and the construction drawings another one to two months. Running the survey and soil investigation in parallel saves time.

Does a steel or prefab villa need the same drawings?

Yes. The structural system is different, but the permit, structural design, soil report and building inspection requirements are the same. For a two-storey steel house the calculations follow steel design rules; the rest of the file matches a concrete villa.

If you've just bought land, get the zoning status certificate and setting-out sketch first, then sit down with an architect. Having an engineer who knows the site involved from the design stage of villa construction settles many of the questions that would otherwise surface halfway through the build.