MINICITY THEME PARK BUILDING

Completed in 2004, the Minicity Theme Park Building is a 55,000 square meter (592,015 square foot) facility that serves an exhibition of 1:25 scale models of buildings from different regions of Turkey. A requirement of the client was that the building would not allow visitors to see the models from the outside.

A fragmented, angular plan is faced on the south side by a long, high wall, which fulfills the client’s desire to separate the commercial and recreational functions of the building from those of the theme park. The architect describes the building as a “series of shells that constitute their own specificity.” Broken or “torn” at several points, the rear of the building allows for terraces on the side, where the scale models are located. On the western side, the building is “detached from the ground, somewhere between dividing and not dividing the interior and exterior”.

This project was one of the works short-listed among the finalists and featured in the traveling exhibition in 2005 for the EUROPEAN UNION PRIZE FOR CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE/ MIES VAN DER ROHE AWARD.*