Aga Khan Award Nomination 2013
The site of this project is the old Merinos textile factory grounds, one of the landmarks of Turkey’s industrialization process during the 20th century. Originally built during Turkey’s Early Republican period and opened by M.K. Atatürk on 2 February 1938, the Merinos factory was abandoned after the year 2000 and given to the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality in 2005, to be developed for cultural and creative activities. The Bursa Metropolitan Municipality has undertaken and realized this project to give the building and its environs new functions that meet the contemporary social and cultural needs of the growing city. The Merinos Park, Merinos Culture Center, and the new Atatürk Opera and Concert Hall have been completed in April 2010.
The former Merinos Factory building, that had lost its practical and technical functionality, constitutes the main site of this re-use project. The newly transformed Merinos Culture Center houses the following cultural facilities: A music conservatory, art galleries, art studios, library, textile and silk museums.
The complex is planned for the people of Bursa to be used through the cultural and educational functions of the Bursa Municipality. The Preservation Committee of Bursa has made a crucial decision, on the request of the architects, to declare the land of the entire settlement to be used solely for the purposes of Culture, Art, Education, and Recreation, while banning any possibility of commercially developing or constructing new buildings on the land in the future. The Merinos Park surrounding the building has been fully opened to the use of Bursa’s inhabitants. Other than the historical Merinos factory building, the site has been cleared of any derelict buildings, thus allowing for the park area to be increased from the previous 138,000 m2 to 208,000 m2 of green space. This unexpected recreational space has been serving the people of Bursa since 2008.
This project has taken part in many national and international conferences and publications. It has been exhibited in the Prague Biennale, the London and Barcelona World Architecture Festivals, METU Ankara, and at the Istanbul Technical University. The project received the Union of Historical Towns “Excellence in Architecture Award” in 2007, and was cited as one of the projects by 20+10+XArchitecture Awards in 2008. After the full completion of the complex, it was nominated for the 2010 Aga Khan Awards. In 2010, the project received the ‘International Architecture Award 2010’ from the Chicago Athenaeum and has been exhibited and presented as a lecture at ‘The City and The World’ Exhibition and Conference in Madrid. It will be exhibited further in Europe and North America alongside other projects awarded by the Chicago Athenaeum.
