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With a history of over 100 years, Kabataş Erkek High School is one of the pioneer high schools in Turkey. However, part of it’s campus is currently under threat of privatization to luxurious cafes, restaurants, wedding organisations, and high end art galleries. This privatised east end of the campus is today restricted to high school students, who must pass through a security check.

This is simply wrong. Spaces that once belonged to students are violated, and the campus urgently needs to be claimed back!

Project has two main goals. Primarily it is to declare the east part of the campus a student area again.

Can Architecture take a stand?

Throughout the project, it was also a process of discovery, what architectural decisions could do and what they would be representing.

This was tackled mainly through urban strategies, fundamentally by locating the dormitory across the street and locking it to the today’s privatised campus area through a bridge with the intention of breeding a strong argument on students’ side; so that it is harder to rent it back for the profitable functions in the future as it would be an actively circulated space by students, coming and going to their homes every day.

Furthermore, declaration within the design continues through configuration of the spaces with gathering qualities for students. Especially, by rising concentrated gathering spaces eg. library, cantine, music hall, after school working spaces, in the exact locations where it is currently forbidden to be enter for students.

Second aim of the project is to bring to light the historical heritage present on campus. Two generations of architecture exist in the campus. The original structure dates back to the late 19th century, and it was renovated in the 1990's. This proposal would be the third generation on campus.Through minor but precise interventions, this new layer of reclaim grows around and within the two historical layers.

For example by making use of the cistern again as an everyday circulation space as it integrates it into the bridge, by revealing the linear character of the 90’s intervention, by formally and symbolically emphasizing the former sports hall; and by turning historical walls from merely structural standings into underlined objects to view and interact with, through a specific joint
(set-back) strategy. Every time a new wall comes across a 19th century wall, it is a moment of historical shaft leaking into the new structure and enlarging it.

Historical horsemanship structure that is used as a cinema today is turned back into a sports hall, like it used to be when the students claimed east part of the campus for the first time in 1930’s. The structure is relieved and revealed through two meters of set back around it. The lining around the sports hall being open-air, without a roof, on it’s west is the dancing studio standing with the historical shafts on it’s both sides. The structure from the 90’s enclosure is finally defined. By the folding glass doors, it finds its linear formal quality back.

And the heart..The elevator from the bridge to the ground is right inside the cistern, and the staircase gently touching the sports hall, then turning around, leads in front of the cistern, then connects to the grand staircase.

The entrance to the east unit comes forward about 6 meters and accompanies the gathering space. Continuing with the cantine and following the historical shaft, one would be led into the double space music hall.

On the west unit, the sports hall is extended until the existing columns, and the area in between are used as a tribune space. 

[DD section] Walking on the bridge from the dormitory, before taking the staircase is a mini terrace point, oriented to the sea. Then the circulation heart continues softly around cistern and the sports hall structure and finally lands; to connect with the grand staircase. And under, the grand stairscase’s slope forms the ceiling of the conference hall. The space vertically narrows down like a trumpet, focusing the stage, accompained by the backstage and the storage spaces.

In this image, the contemporary mini-twin (dance studio) is seen together with the original sports hall structure, where the historic structure feeds the twin with reflected light jumping off its façade...and where the twin frames this original layer, and stands there surrounded by the historical shaft, letting it leak in.

Plaster and yellow paint on the walls of the sports hall (seen on right) are peeled off, revealing the original structure. The sports zone is located all around the historic horsemanship building, a nod to the students' squatting in 1930, when the royal ruins were turned into a sports hall.

It is imagined as a vibrant, bold, rebellious, sweaty, sunny, airy space with a contemporary interior, surrounded by 19th-century exteriors.

Students come and go through the historical terrace, peeking into the basketball game played on below, in the sports hall. They join the dancing class simply by having a seat on the passage, or find their way to escape the class and climbing the staircases around the cistern running home.

On its façade facing the street, the opening is an upside-down arch, following the rhythmic arched openings from the 19th century seen in the rest of the façade; but expressing its time and character as the third generation through its nuanced orientation.

19th century

20th century

today

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