Industrial heritage, modern art and university life: santralistanbul

ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News

The city of Istanbul reveals its loud and, sometimes, hectic side in Taksim Square in the centre of the city where a never-ending flow of taxis, cars, busses and pedestrians continuously arrive, depart, wait and move on. It's the white busses with the distinct black and white santralistanbul writing, almost stoically making their way every twenty minutes through the thick traffic at Taksim, which provide commuters a way out of this tumult: only a twenty-five minute ride later and one finds oneself amidst a lush green campus with large plane trees, whose leaves rustle in the breeze blowing across from the adjacent Golden Horn. We have arrived at santralistanbul, the metropolis' newest cultural and educational centre, built on the grounds of Istanbul's first power plant which provided the city with electricity from 1911 until 1983. After lying idle for two decades, the private Istanbul Bilgi University took up the task of revitalizing the seven hectares site in 2004 with the legal stipulation of having to preserve the historical buildings which made up the power plant.

And indeed, after three years of arduous construction work, one can confidently say that the ideal of revitalization in the name of culture and education has been achieved: the power plant has been transformed into an energy museum where visitors can marvel at the aesthetics of the now-silent electric turbines which, enormous yet almost graceful, speak of a different age in which heavy industries still meant might and progress. Take just a few steps across the entrance hall and one is catapulted back into today's (post) modern age: within the five floors of the adjacent newly built museum of modern art, one can view the history of modern Turkish artists beginning in the 1950s. Together with a residence programme for international artists, a library for the university and the surrounding quarter, as well as the new buildings of the university, vitality has, indeed, been returned to this area at the tip of the Golden Horn. Groups of school children visit the museum in the morning, students come and go to their lectures, companies hold conferences, and local and international artists, as well as art lovers, drop by.

As with her other two campuses in the quarters of Kuştepe and Dolapdere, Istanbul Bilgi University has, with santralistanbul, once again deliberately chosen to place itself in a socio-economically deprived quarter of the city, with the intention of functioning as a catalyst for change and development. Indeed, the contrasts between “inside” and “outside” are striking; the worlds of artists, intellectuals and working families come face to face here in a situation that will hopefully, in the future, turn into exchange and dialogue. To this goal, the gates of santralistanbul are kept open to everyone as will be the library, to open in the coming year, which will not only serve the university but is explicitly designed as a library for the surrounding quarter. Much has been accomplished, while much still lies ahead. For example, an amphitheatre is envisioned on the shores of the Golden Horn, a “Street of Arts” just outside the project's gates and the library is still under construction.

Nevertheless, santralistanbul has, since its opening in September 2007, already managed to become a new focus of creative and intellectual activity, pointing to the possible future of Istanbul's formerly industrial areas along the beautiful shores of the Golden Horn. Brittle beauty of early-twentieth century industrialization, challenging sights of modern art, thought-inspiring university life, lush green of trees and meadows – all that to be found simply by a short ride on one of the little busses with the conspicuous black and white label.santralistanbul

Eski Silahtarağa Elektrik Santralı

Kâzım Karabekir Cad. 1

34060 Eyüp/Istanbul

www.santralistanbul.org

Inform,28.06.08