Turkish
Architecture & Design
Tabanlıoğlu Architects is the culmination of over 60 years of architectural experience whose work today comprises a wide range of building types from housing, offices, mixed-use, public and cultural buildings to industrial projects and high-rises.
Tabanlioğlu Architects postulates that one of the big issues inherent in urban development is to create city spaces that are interactive to allow citizens to truly mingle; that in order to make better cities, buildings should be multifunctional and take inspiration from both ceremonial and informal public spaces.
It is this philosophy that not only informs their work – and can be seen in their builds from shopping centres to office spaces – but is also something they are adopting for their own headquarters in Istanbul, aiming to make it a social hub for the creative Beyoğlu area.
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The owner of the pharmaceutical company is an elderly couple who would like the house feeling at the office; accordingly, scales, organization and aesthetics refer to residential settings, namely traditional Istanbul waterside mansions. Like a small county settlement, juxtaposition of seven house-like volumes with hipped roofs forms the campus.
The individual 'houses' integrate to each other either through gardens, roof gardens, upper or lower patios and paths and atriums. The brown color of the exterior brings up the soft wood effect and unifies the structure.
Reminiscent of modern villas, daylight enters through roofs and all transparent sides, creating a diffused lighting mood in the spacious internal space until the basement floor. To provide the balance of light and shadow and to increase the efficiency of passive climate control, the masses are enveloped with a designed mesh system.
In addition to the wide windows, interiors of the basement floor receive daylight also through atriums. The main entrance to the building is provided at the ground floor, by way of a bridge, side bridges link the roof terraces.
Atriums and interior gardens create social zones between offices, located at the ground floor.
Ataturk Cultural Centre (AKM)
The Tabanlıoğlu name first became notable in 1945, when Dr. Hayati Tabanlıoğlu was still a student and initial conversations around the Ataturk Cultural Centre (AKM) opera house were taking place.
He became involved in the project when it was turned over to the Ministry of Public Works for its design to be completed and Hayati Tabanlioğlu was made head of the office in charge of its construction; it has become a unique and definitive example of modern architecture in Turkey.
The philosophical legacy of the AKM’s designs, its contribution to Turkish architecture, the provision of urban cultural space and stimulating cultural renewal are principles that Murat and Melkan Tabanlioğlu have continued throughout Tabanlioğlu’s work since it was established in 1990 by Dr. Hayati Tabanlioğlu and his son, Murat.
Fifty years on from the original design of the AKM, Tabanlioğlu Architects created the Istanbul Modern, the city’s first museum of modern art and a benchmark from which a fine new crop of art museums has arisen all around the city
Istanbul Modern Museum
Of further importance, the Istanbul Modern is also the heart of the Galata Port Project which sets out to bridge the divide between a 1.2km stretch of the Bosphorus shore and the hinterland of Beyoğlu; Karakoy – where Istanbul Modern is located - has now become something of an epicenter for arts & culture with a young and vibrant urban life, linking to Beyoğlu whose galleries, museums and places to listen to music make it a complementary neighbourhood, as well as reconnecting it back to the shore, the source of its original prosperity.
It is considered as an extension of the public area. Interaction between the visitors, surroundings, exhibited work and the building is aimed to be highest.
Minimum interference has been the architectural approach; the existing structural essence is preserved.
Transparent glass partitions provide continuity between spaces. Interior spaces exposed to the background view of the open-air museum city of Istanbul through wide glass openings, which transfer various moods of outside atmosphere. In the context of building up, preserving and generating culture, modern art museums are vital all over the world. As a dynamic stage of contemporary Turkey, Istanbul Modern aims to foster and present diverse social, cultural and artistic productions with the integral participation of public.
Tabanlıoğlu Architects debuts at Somerset House in partnership with Arik Levy at London Design Festival 2015
Istanbul-based Tabanlıoğlu Architects have been chosen to showcase their installation with Arik Levy at the inaugural Somerset House 10 Designers in the West Wing at London Design Festival 2015. An exciting time for Tabanlıoğlu Architects as they open their London office, their involvement in London Design Festival and partnership with renowned artist and industrial designer, Arik Levy, brings together two like-minded spheres of talent to create a striking installation in a two-room space at Somerset House.
Their collaboration involves the creation of a lowered ceiling of light by Arik Levy made of LED strips – an extension of his eponymous ‘Fractal Projects’, a light sculpture that represents no beginning and no end’ – and simultaneously, a multi-faceted kinetic object placed underneath that has a reflective surface, by Tabanlıoğlu Architects.
One room will host a dense layer of light that is reflected in the floor, creating the ‘warm’ room. The other will be more sparsely lit with opaque qualities over a solid pool - an endlessly shifting metal platform that holds dispersing water drops - evoking a ‘wet’ cooler sensation for the individual.The joint work of Tabanlıoğlu Architects and Arik Levy will use diverse mediums of light and solid, dry and wet, warm and cold, in an interdisciplinary collaboration between architecture and art. Both parties' prior works reveal keen understanding of transparency, light, opacity and transition between them.
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