Salt, art institution Istanbul-style

IT’S A perennial question: how to adapt old buildings to modern purposes while preserving our architectural heritage. And it’s coming up more and more often in a city such as Istanbul, with its large collection of Ottoman-era buildings that, slowly but surely, are being brought back into use.

GAD’s Borusan Culture and Arts Centre is a recent example, which kept the shell of a 19^th century apartment block but inserted a steel diagrid box to create unusual layerings of the old and new, and the latest contribution to the genre is Salt, a combination of art gallery, archive and research body, which has just opened its new headquarters in two fine examples of the classical-oriental style that flourished on the European side of Istanbul in the mid to late 19^th century.                                                      

One, renamed Salt Galata, opened in December and was formerly the home of the Ottoman bank; the tunnel that was used to bring gold and other reserves from the nearby Golden Horn still exists apparently. The other, hundreds of metres away, which had the classic typology of shop on the ground floor and apartments above, is now named Salt Beyoğlu and opened in April.

The facades of both buildings make for an unexpected introduction to Turkey’s most experimental art institution, but Aga Khan award-winning architect Han Tümertekin decided early on to restore their original volumes and quality of light, removing the 20^th century additions, including a floor at Salt Galata that, inexplicably, was blocking the skylight and a lift blocking the view of the main staircase.

Those qualities are emphasised further by a type of sleight of hand. In the Salt Galata foyer, for example, few of the sources of light are visible; they are hidden behind cornices and banisters, or in white beams held up on thin wires. The colour scheme doesn’t depart much from the white and grey of the original’s ubiquitous marble. The transition to the new extension further back, containing the bookshop and cafe, is signalled merely by the extra shine of the new tiles, which are direct copies of the old.

At his office, a stone’s throw from the Bosphorous, Tümertekin told me:  “The project taught me to control myself. I was free to enlarge my interventions but I detected the architectural qualities of the buildings, whether the details, the volumes, the light. By seeing these qualities you learn a lot. I had a chance to rethink the clichés about 19^th century classical architecture.”

There is an irony here. Le Corbusier and his disciples worshipped those concepts of volume and light, but they would have had no hesitation in consigning the bank, built in 1892 by the École des Beaux-Arts-trained Alexandre Vallaury in a rich decorative style, to the wrecking ball.

Salt’s directors commissioned other designers to work on the project to showcase top new talent in the country. The decision could have led to conflict, with Tümertekin keen to give prominence to the original qualities of the buildings.

However, it is precisely the unlikely combination of their different approaches—his wish to rediscover those qualities and the other practices’ determination to introduce state-of-the-art technology and a vitality, almost playfulness sometimes, to the brief—that gives the Salt HQ its unique character.

At Salt Galata, the extensive library, by Şanal Architecture Planning, the hub of the building, still houses the original bank safe, by Chatwood’s of Newgate Street, London, now a store for books. Users are able to watch films, conduct meetings and do presentations – it is not intended that silence should reign supreme. Glass panels, 20 metres above the library, move constantly, creating disco-like effects on Vallaury’s original tiled floor, columns and walls.

Similar glass panels have been installed above the foyer at Salt Beyoğlu: it is one of the “common references” that Tümertekin thought were essential to be able to view the two buildings as part of one organisation.

The wood-lined auditorium, by Zoom TPU, is used for talks, films and performance; the inner part of the ear was the inspiration here. The main office, by Superpool, is designed as a “parliament”, with a central area hosting presentations and discussions. The reception areas, by Autoban, continue the love affair the building has with marble: slabs of the material in a “semi-finished” state form the reception desks and corridor walls.

The creation of “promenades architecturales” helped to provide the public character that was needed, and another common reference. At Salt Galata, the promenade goes from the main staircase to the multi-level galleries that serve the exhibition rooms, workshops and offices. The new lifts are made of glass and positioned in such a way that one can take in the different spaces, including the rooftop restaurant, with its views of the famous Istanbul skyline, sketched so lovingly by Le Corbusier in 1911 during his ideas-forming “Journey to the east”.

At Salt Beyoğlu, the stone-paved ground floor is designed as a continuation of Istiklal Caddesi, Istanbul’s busiest pedestrian street, which teems with people day and night, attracted by the numerous shops, restaurants and, increasingly now, cultural attractions – Borusan, for example, is nearby.

It includes a cinema that has no doors or walls separating it from the rest of the reception area. Two lines of original iron columns lead you to the entrance proper, a steel staircase, which rises to an interior square with bookshop and bistro and the first of the exhibition rooms. From here, the original staircase further back provides access to other exhibition rooms, and, on the roof, a garden where food will be produced.

As Tümertekin says, “There are new interventions but with something continuing with history.”

Both buildings are free to enter and have signage and exhibition information in Turkish and English, offering a civic amenity where people can while away half an hour during a lunch break or undertake serious research in some beautiful spaces. Tümertekin told me, “It is rare to find such public spaces. It is not common in the city – we do not have that kind of architectural heritage. We have some but it is not easily accessible.” For all its attractions, Istanbul has lacked such a facility for too long, and providing it has been the first of what Salt hopes will be many major contributions to the cultural life of the city.