Istanbul Modern Museum l Renzo Piano Building Workshop + Arup

Architecture, Museum & Exhibition hall

The new Istanbul Modern Museum features five stories and 10,500 square meters of functional space, including expansive exhibition galleries, multipurpose areas, and separate educational, administrative, and retail areas.

Istanbul Modern Museum’s Design Concept

The Istanbul Modern Museum’s grid is 8.4 by 8.4 meters, and its supports are steel-brace concrete to withstand strong earthquakes. Below the ground, the spherical pillars and mechanical tubes create a landscape of architecture. The rounded forms of these building elements eliminate harsh contrasts between light and dark, making for a more pleasant and secure ambiance.

There are a variety of resources for visitors just off the main lobby, including a library, coffee shop, museum store, information desks, and classrooms. An outdoor sculpture terrace and learning facilities for children are separated from the rest of the building by a translucent acrylic fence below the main structure.
An enormous central stairway connects the Istanbul Modern Museum’s public floors, floating in the vast main lobby’s vacuum. Downstairs from the entrance on the ground floor is an auditorium with 156 seats. The first level houses a photography gallery, a pop-up exhibition space, administrative offices, classrooms, and event spaces. The restaurant’s south-facing patio looks out over the water.

Views of Tophane Park and the Bosphorus from the museum’s upper-level lobbies keep visitors connected to their natural atmosphere and serve as indicators for them within the structure. Gallery space for fixed and rotating exhibitions totals 3,300 square meters on the building’s uppermost level.
From the second-floor foyer, guests can ascend to a glass pavilion that leads out to the rooftop panoramic terrace, which spans 650 square meters and floats above a shallow plane of water that covers the whole roof. The city’s reflections become one with the sea in this water feature, forging a spiritual bond between the two.