Announcements   Projects   Media   NSMH   Contact   TR

SANTRALİSTANBUL
Eyüp/İstanbul︎ 2007 ︎ Construction Area: 118.000 m2 ︎ site: 118.000 m2 ︎ Education
︎ Emre Arolat (EAA), İhsan Bilgin, Nevzat Sayın, İbrahim Eyüp, Onur Eroğuz, Özlem Özdemir, Sibel Özdoğan








Silahtarağa Power Station is located at the end of the Golden Horn extending from the area where Alibeyköy and Kağıthane Creeks disembogue into the Golden Horn, and sprawls across an area of 120,000 m² that continues along the delta of Alibeyköy Creek.  It is the first power station of the Ottoman Empire. Designed by the French and initially built by the Hungarians, the power station’s construction began in 1910 and continued until 1957. It was in operation as a power station until 1986, whereupon it was left to its fate.
        It is immediately next to Sadabad, one of Istanbul’s most important excursion points along the Kağıthane Creek. On the other side is Eyüp… This entire region was used as an industrial zone from the last period of the Ottoman Empire until the 1990; the creeks and the Golden Horn were used as wastewater channels. Today, there is no industry here to speak of and what was once the deposit area of the city is now the most favorable gentrification zone of recent times.  So, the power station property is at the heart of this deposit zone that it was also a part of once. It is right over the motorway, water transportation, and the newly installed rail system. It is far enough from the city center and right at the heart of it, in a district with a glorious past and a ‘bright’ future. It is like the lever of an organic urban transformation project. I’m not sure if we could have described a better place if we had searched for an ideal university location.
       With as-built drawings, we determined the buildings to be preserved and the existing traces of buildings among the trees and decided to settle in the same areas in order not to damage the green fabric. Hence, we could preserve the overall layout of the old industrial campus. For us, preserving the old layout was like preserving the old feeling, which was important.
       There were two kinds of old buildings; the boiler houses—universal blocks featuring the common stylistic characteristics of the period and administrative and turbine buildings and lodgings that highlighted regional characteristics as local blocks. . We tried to design the school buildings without trying to create a dominant effect between the other two prevailing characteristics. While many details and the use of materials recall the old ones, they do not compete with them.
        There are no new school building constructed in a place where no other building existed before. An important majority of the new buildings are the school buildings comprised of four blocks. The buildings are set on a 7.5 x 7.5 meter grid system. This measurement was derived both from the measurements of the old traces and from new needs. It was finalized with the data provided on construction, flexibility, divisibility, the need for large classrooms, and academic rooms. From its inauguration to the present, the campus underwent many changes and was able to carry these changes.