PUR is a unique hybrid structure that brings together a boutique hotel and a recording studio, designed through a collaborative creation process with both international and local musicians. The project aims to unite historical context and local craftsmanship with a world-class recording environment, creating a space where cultural production and spatial experience coexist seamlessly. Cunda,… View Article
PUR is a unique hybrid structure that brings together a boutique hotel and a recording studio, designed through a collaborative creation process with both international and local musicians. The project aims to unite historical context and local craftsmanship with a world-class recording environment, creating a space where cultural production and spatial experience coexist seamlessly.
Cunda, Türkiye — March 16, 2026. Completed on the island of Cunda as a boutique hotel and recording studio, PUR represents a simple yet essential belief: music brings us together while honoring differences and enabling individuality. Conceived as a platform for interaction, the project intertwines the act of music production with the practice of building communities across cultures and contexts. Designed through a collaborative process with international and local musicians, PUR is a unique hybrid structure that merges hospitality with a world-class recording environment, rooted in historical context and local craftsmanship.
Architect İnanç Eray describes the journey as an opportunity to both respect the existing fabric and elevate local values, while applying international design expertise in spatial experience and quality of life. The project addresses a fundamental architectural question: how can a structure honor the natural character shaped by the sea, olive trees, wind, and birds, while simultaneously delivering the precision required for professional music production? PUR explores whether local identity and advanced technology can coexist not as opposites, but as mutually reinforcing forces.
The building rises as a refined two-story masonry and timber structure, remaining faithful to Cunda’s architectural heritage while interpreting it through a contemporary tectonic language. Inside, however, the experience transforms entirely. Interiors are conceived as a sequence of acoustic landscapes, carefully calibrated through variations in ceiling heights, spatial proportions, and reflective or absorptive surfaces. Each space offers a distinct sonic identity, where volume, form, and materiality work together to create an experience perceptible even to a trained ear.
A glass fiber reinforced concrete shell marks a pivotal threshold within the building. Acting as a transition between Cunda’s tranquil atmosphere and a high-performance sonic environment, this element symbolizes the fluidity of music across time, cultures, and people. This spatial transition leads users to the Musicians’ Foyer, located 10 meters below ground level. While evoking the focused, immersive atmosphere of a subterranean cave, natural light remains a defining element of the design. Despite its depth, the foyer maintains a strong visual connection with the restaurant and upper terraces, preserving a sense of openness and comfort. The spatial continuity eliminates the feeling of being underground, instead offering an experience akin to being at home.
The studio complex includes live recording rooms, a control room, vocal and percussion rooms, echo chambers, editing suites, a mastering suite, and a Dolby Atmos cinema. Built using a box-in-box system to ensure acoustic isolation and performance, the main recording hall is capable of accommodating a 75-piece orchestra. With adjustable ceiling heights and movable wall panels, the space can be “tuned” like an instrument. Acoustic designer Chris Walls (Level Acoustic Design) emphasizes that this combination of movable ceilings and variable wall panels allows precise control over reverberation time and early reflections, creating a highly versatile and unique sonic palette, further enhanced by the inclusion of two echo chambers.
Developed through SOUR’s participatory design methodology, the project is grounded in principles defined together with musicians: connection to nature, a “glocal” approach, spaces for active creativity, and personal retreat areas. These principles are not abstract ideas but tangible drivers shaping every spatial decision. The result is a structure that stands as a testament to collaboration—an architectural framework brought to life by the voices of those who create within it.