Türkiye’s first museum of modern and contemporary art was founded in 2004. The new museum, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, replaces the old building on the same site in the Karaköy neighborhood, on the western bank of the Bosphorous. Retaining the industrial ambience of the original museum building, the new volume acts as a hinge between the old town and the new commercial area of Galataport.

The building is based on an 8.4 x 8.4-meter grid with steel-brace concrete columns designed to resist significant seismic events. With 10,500 square meters of usable space across five levels – three above grande and two buried –, the building emerges over the recessed plinth. The façade comprises 300 aluminum panels that interact with the changing light of the sun, between external steel walkways and stairs.

In an 8 meters wide and 16 meters long void, the stairs pierce through all public levels from the mezzanine to second floor. Another staircase leads from the second-floor lobby to a 650-square-meter rooftop viewing terrace that hovers above a shallow plane of water spread across the entire roof, as an extension of the Bosphorous.