One of the most important cultural heritages, Chora Museum, is located in an environment where the city is built in an unplanned, indifferent and cramped order, with an inner garden of its own in the south. While the building was being converted into a museum, some temporary and unqualified service spaces were added to the garden for visitors and museum management. Visitors who come to Chora, which is one of the most visited museums in the country even with this careless attitude, enter the inner garden from the north side of the building, meet the security, ticket, audio guide and toilet needs in the very unqualified buildings/spaces in the garden, and then, they enter the museum through the south side of the building without any orientation.

In fact, the museum’s taking the visitors to its inner garden first and then to the museum from there was an important decision whose current potential was never evaluated. It is precisely at this point that we can evaluate the potentials of this decision, and instead of just passing through the security and buying a ticket from the inner garden, visitors can pause at this point where the Kariye Museum Building is best perceived from the outside, learn about the building, maybe have a coffee or shop at the museum store while doing these. We want to design a setup that will enable the visitors to guide them to the museum entrance with instinctive feelings. While we are desinging all these, we want to leave the visitors alone and alone with the Kariye Museum Building by isolating the visitors in the garden, from the unqualified neighbourhood structures and even from the visitor center structures that we design.

Client Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism
Date December 2018
Location İstanbul
Team Sinan Tuncer, Oğuzhan Aydın