Design & Build
Aparat is a design studio and production workshop that offers design professionals, business owners and private clients an array of design, fabrication, creative direction and consulting services.
We design and build environments, custom furniture, fixtures and finishes, specializing in bespoke functions, forms, materials and mechanisms. ​
We can also help you develop a product or space of your own imagining.
Aparat is a Bay Area-based design studio and workshop, developing and producing our own designs as well as yours.
Aparat is a design studio and production workshop that offers design professionals, business owners and private clients an array of design, fabrication, creative direction and consulting services.
We design and build environments, custom furniture, fixtures and finishes, specializing in bespoke functions, forms, materials and mechanisms. ​
We can also help you develop a product or space of your own imagining.
Imagining, Problem-Solving, Building
When director Alper Böler moved from Istanbul to the Bay Area, he realized that fabrication, industrial or artisanal, cannot be done here with the same immediacy and collaboration that he grew up with and was shaped by in Turkey. In Istanbul, he was able to stand beside craftsmen in their workshops to produce custom work—ankle-deep in wood shavings or dusted with metal powder, his ears ringing with hammers on copper. Aparat is a collaborative way to bring together that knowledge of production with his design skills, and unite material problem-solving with creative insight.
Ahmet Turan Köksal
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Köksal earned his PhD in architecture in 2001 from Istanbul's Yıldız Technical University, having launched ATK Design studio with a partner four years earlier.
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In 2006, Köksal founded the Arkitera Education Center, a web portal, magazine publisher and scholarly and events center, exploring the practice of architecture.
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Köksal has earned prizes in national and international architectural competitions and teaches architecture and energy simulation, design and design management software courses.
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He has written two novels and three technical manuals (1997, 2001, 2013), including the only book in the Turkish language about 3D modeling software Sketchup.
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From 2012-3, he served as architectural consultant to the President of the Turkish Republic at the Abdullah Gül University in the city of Kayseri.
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With his wife, who is also an architect, Köksal has worked on surveys, restitution and restoration plans for historical buildings, including the legendary Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia) church/mosque/museum and the iconic Bosphorus tower, Rumeli Hisarı.
In addition to co-founding design studio and workshop Aparat in northern California in 2021, Köksal currently publishes two blogs about the design of mosques (camigor.com) and stairs (merdivengor.com).
Expertise & Experience
Aparat offers expertise and experience. Alper is an industrial and interior designer. As a veteran of CAD and Viz software with a range of hands-on engineering, prototyping, materials, and building experience, Alper doesn't just think about making designs, he makes them. Just as important, years of working with diverse makers has taught him how essential it is to listen closely and communicate clearly.
Artisanry, Not Assembly
Aparat is also prepared to find and tap the most appropriate resources, human or machine, for your project. In the San Rafael workshop, we can turn many materials into custom pieces. But we are also in contact with a network of workshops and factories in Turkey and elsewhere, which enables us to work with myriad materials and techniques from upholstery, blown glass and cast bronze to milled brass and carved marble. This means that we are not limited by our own limitations, but are able to sample knowledge and skills sometimes passed down through generations of artisans and tradesmen here and abroad.
Aparat grafts a design studio and production workshop onto your project team.
We design, develop and produce our own designs or yours, whether they feature unusual forms, functions, mechanisms or materials. Veterans of CAD and Viz software, we come equipped with a range of engineering, prototyping and building experience and capabilities, so that, whether your design is fully rendered or just a fuzzy idea, we can come in at any stage of the project to take it through production.
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While based in Istanbul, we enjoyed access to a rich ecosystem of makers. We were not only thinking about design, we were making it, in collaboration with artisans in their workshops and tradesmen in their factories. In the process of getting our own work fabricated, we learned the importance of listening and communicating constantly and clearly to get the job done right. We're able to understand not just the technical aspects of your project, but the intention and subtleties that make your design unique and the importance of preserving that unique intention throughout the process.
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Commercial interior design and environments
. Brand-wide retail concepts, design, development and consulting
. Brand-wide retail environments
. Interactive and kinetic storefronts
. Visual merchandising
. Pop-up stores
. Event spaces
. Trade fair booths
. Office space
. Customer, staff and customer-to-staff interfaces
. Customer engagement
Custom commercial furniture and product design
. Development and production of your own design
. Production-only of your own design
. Custom furniture and fixtures
. One-offs and industrial products
Residential interiors and environments
. Interior design for any room in the house or outside of it, including children's rooms, social or private space, kitchen or bath, home cinema to home office
. Custom furniture, fixtures and finishes
. Consulting, residential concepts
. Build-out and fabrication
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Creative direction
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. Spatial branding and identity
. Retail environments design
. Build-out and fabrication
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Production
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. Based in our North Bay workshop, our production extends through a network of producers working elsewhere, around the Bay Area to Istanbul.