Istambul Museum of Painting & Sculpture
Estambul TR
EMRE AROLAT ARCHITECTURE
2011
Type
Museum
Tags
renovations, cultural facilities, art spaces
Visitability
Allowed
Description
In 2021 Entrepot Number 5 in the Karaköy Harbor was allocated to Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University for the purpose of transforming it into the Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museum. This was the way cleared for the public use of an area which, although located on an important site in the city center, had almost no social permeability, and for the building of an original, high-quality museum to house thousands of valuable works including important pieces of late Ottoman to modern Turkish painting. Instead of a conventional framework-glass solution for the transparente facade that would cover the work and protect it from the elements, we undertook an original system quoting the industrial past of the structure. The galleries, organized so that some could be connected and others isolated, were interrelated by means of new passageways and bridges. This came into play in an environment where interfaces between galleries were formed that offered unexpected perspectives, while viewers would be able to establish unalloyed as well as relationships between the galleries and the city. The narrow-long office structure built on the Meclis-i Mebusan Boulevard side next to the entrepot building had grave weaknesses in its load-bearing system, and also particularly original facades. We planned to rebuild it with a similar feeling for memory. The three-dimensional empty space formed in this section allowed the entry and diffusion spaces to be enriched by atelier and public use functions. By treating the ground floor with a use strategy as permeable as possible, the relationship this structure would form with the other buildings and open spaces around it was strengthened. It is hoped that all of these structural characteristics will help the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museum to form a new, original and fresh center within the cultural landscape of the city. (Description provided by the architects)