Istanbul City Museum, to be established by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, will tell the 8.000 years old story of the city in different perspectives to the citizens and the guests. The museum is designed as a centre of attraction reflecting the past, the present as well as the future situations of the city.

It has been a challenging work to design the museum of a city which has a long history that goes back until the  7th century BC. This challenge is multiplied by the location of the project site next to the historical walls, and by a vast inventory list to incorporate into  the museum narration. The Museum of Istanbul is a longtime dream project, on the agenda of the city during the last couple of decades. During this time several attempts had failed but finally our project was approved by the Culture and Heritage Conservation Board in 2015. The architectural design has been conducted in parallel to historical archive studies by the curatorial team, scientific consultants and researchers, and finally the construction started in 2016.

History and Location 

The site is adjacent to the Gate of St. Romanus of the Theodosian City Walls from the fifth century which has been a strong representation of the multi layered history of the city. The walls evolved together with the name of the city Byzantion, Konstantinopolis, Konstantiniyye, İstanbul. We can read how different societies had used the wall collectively by restoring, repairing and extending the masonry work. These important traces guided the elaboration of the architectural project.

As the urban settlement expanded, the walls became part of the center rather than being the borders of the city. The Theodosian Walls has also became one of the city’s must see routes for the travelers since 17th Century. In this context we proposed the museum as a node that integrates this route together with the modern transportation hubs of today which also played an important role in the transfiguration of the building. 

Monolith

As an architectural archetype, museum is a contradictory type of structure. Maybe its charm exists from here. The museum is first of all a public building that must be open to everyone and welcoming. On the other hand, it is a type of structure that should develop concentration for its visitors. In other words, it is a typology that must be introverted to focus on the content or activity exhibited within and at the same time it has a strong presence which comes from the scale.

The building gives the impression of being carved out of a solid mass and has a low height that communicates with the historic city walls nearby. Mainly formed by the rotation to relate to the route that follows the land walls and the transportation hub, the structure is split by a pedestrian bridge to connect to the topographical condition of the site.

The museum’s first floor, in which the permanent exhibition halls are located, hovers above the ground floor with wide cantilevered canopies, allowing the main mass to break off from the ground. The transparent ground floor is organized by all the public functions including a city library, a temporary exhibition zone, a lecture hall, cafes, restaurants and a kids atelier which open to the park through the Museum Square. Three floor slabs underground house laboratories, service zones, storages, ateliers and parking. 

Scenography

As Orhan Pamuk states the museum is almost the time itself and the time is not only linear or directional. The curation of the inventory in thematic and chronological sections played a decisive role in the organization of the museum floor. The museum’s narration is composed by seven thematic sections that generate a chronological path through the different era. Each section proposes a different scenario with changing characteristics in the exhibition method and display design. The visitor is guided in a cyclic path moving throughout the building until the main ramp that connects to the enclosed courtyard, a corner to rest, to remember and to gather. 

Reflecting the Heritage

The monolith that houses the museum floor is developed from the alignment of the entrance axis and the visitor route movement inside the exhibition. The modulation of the façade panels reinforces this mass formation. The panelization details correlate with the traces of the different eras on the masonry work of the Land Walls.

The façade is composed of anodized metal and glass. The massive building, around one hundred meters long, is covered in metal to create a continuous transformation effect in different weather conditions at different times of the day with the reflections of the surrounding landscape and the sky.

The ground floor façade, under the massive metal structure, is designed entirely of glass. The elevated cantilevered mass serves both as eaves that protect visitors from the rain and as a shadow element. Thus, it became possible to detach the main volume from the ground while maintaining the transparency and connectivity of the ground floor to the City Park and the Museum Square. 

Structural Modulation

Reinforced concrete system is used for areas under the ground level and in the cores whereas steel floor slabs and concrete cores hybrid system is preferred on the floors above the ground level to enable wide spaces with fewer columns. Thanks to this hybrid system, the height of the structure could be limited, the carcass sections were kept delicate and the exhibition spaces could be enlarged. Interior spaces and exhibition spaces were planned in coordination by the modulation of the structural system, glass facade, ensuring the integrity of the structure and spatial arrangement. Ventilation, heating and lighting systems were distributed to the interior spaces with the same modulation. The structural steel system was planned in accordance with the interior partitions that in most of the spaces were used without cladding and coating.