Salt Repository / Erginoğlu & Çalışlar Architects

Architects: Erginoğlu & Çalışlar Architects
Design Team: Kerem Erginoğlu, Hasan C. Çalışlar, Fatih Kariptaş, Emre Erenler, Elmon Pekmez, Türkan Yılmaz
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Client: Medina Turgul DDB
Contractor: Erginoğlu & Çalışlar Architects
Project area: 3,000 sqm
Project year: 2008 – 2009
Photographs: Cemal Emden

An extensive restoration and revitalization project was undertaken to allow the advertising agency group ‘Medina Turgul DDB’ to move into a salt repository they had rented. This 170 year old building had formerly been owned by TEKEL (Turkish State Liquor and Tobacco Monopoly) and is located in the run-down, once industrial district of Kasımpaşa. The restoration challenge was to maximise functionality while retaining the original character of the structure.

sketch 01

Containing 5 separate related specialist companies, with shared backroom operations, the floorplan had to allow for each unit to exist in its own space, while also being easily connected to colleagues in sister units. The solution was to build a series of connecting mezzanine floors integrating the different spaces and greatly increasing the workable floorspace. This was done without cluttering or in any way structurally harming the powerful nature of the existing space, with its thick stone walls and 10 metre high galleries. The different departments and company units’s workspaces were designed around these galleries. A secondary structure in glass and steel was created without touching the original stone walls and respecting the feeling of airy emptiness of the original space.

site plan 01

All the electromechanical installation was designed to go through the consolidated roof trusses. In order to protect the original texture of the building, all the pointings of the stone walls were washed and consolidated with tailormade solutions that were formulated after initial chemical analyses. Ruined and damaged parts of the walls were carefully restored.

The result is a building well suited to a modern creative businesses, with various styes of meeting spaces from casual to formal, easy inter-unit connectivity and the sensation of indivdual ‘thinking space’ all around.