Istanbul Modern was founded in 2004 as Turkey’s first contemporary and modern art museum on the Karakoy Waterfront, where the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn meet. The museum needed a new site to replace the former port warehouse with a contemporary building to “draw the attention of the international art world and reflect the city’s architectural values,” as Oya Eczacıbaı, Chair of Istanbul Modern, said at its opening on May 4, 2023.

The new architecture designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop with Arup Türkiye fits within a complex regeneration plan stretching 1.5 kilometers on the west bank of the Bosphorus. It is an urban hub of reconnection for the historic district of Sultanahmet, Tophane Park, the Galataport complex, and the waters of the Bosphorus. The architecture is conceived as a social and cultural draw, featuring a regular, rectangular form of concrete, steel, and glass. Retaining a memory of the site’s industrial past, it absorbs and reverberates the changing reflections of water and light, the natural and urban landscape.

The covered roof terrace invites visitors to admire the sweeping view of the city and the Bosphorus in a “metaphysical” space made up of the project’s intangible elements: the sky, light, the view, water, and transparency. Moving down to the second and then first floor, the interior landscape becomes tangible and flexible in the office spaces and the multifunctional rooms, as well as permanent and temporary exhibition spaces with art collections from Turkish and international artists from 1945 on. A monumental staircase made of steel, cement, and glass cuts through the architectural volume, continuing down to the underground floor and auditorium.

It allows for vertical movement through the public spaces and provides continuous views of the sea and the city from the spacious lobbies on the different floors. On the ground floor, visual contact with the surroundings is boosted by a transparent façade set back from the volume above it, which is clad in aluminum panels. The façade’s clear surface reverberates with the iridescent reflections of water and natural light. The ground floor has a library, cafeteria, museum shop, information points, and workshop spaces. The covered outer perimeter is filled with concrete support columns, cross-shaped structural components, and large cylindrical chimneys, creating a symbolic, industrial landscape between the park and the promenade on the sea.