If anything defines the Ankara Presidential Symphony Orchestra, it’s its arduous construction schedule. The construction of the concert hall in the Turkish capital took more than three decades and spanned five presidents, ten prime ministers and twenty ministers of culture. It was in 1992 when local architectural firm Uygur Mimarlık won the nationwide tender to design the country’s only presidential music hall. “I still remember hand-cutting parts for the model and drawing sketches with a pair of compasses,” said company co-founder Semra Uygur. Metropolis. She founded the company with her husband Özcan a few years before winning the national competition among the forty-five proposals submitted.

Since then, the uproar has eclipsed the country’s cultural outlook. A recession in the late 1990s was followed by the rise to power of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002, led by party founder Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has since amassed control and l bureaucratic influence. With attempts to join the European Union sidelined, the social landscape has since been inhabited by restrictions on freedom of expression, the national protests in Gezi Park in 2013 and the brutal coup attempt failure of 2016.

After breaking ground on 14 acres of land in 1997, construction of the music hall encountered multiple stops along the way due to budget cuts and shifting priorities between different governments. A kickoff three years ago finally resulted in the completion of what is now a 673,250 square foot resort, which reflects its resilience through a decidedly forward-looking design.

Comprised of both curvilinear and sharp-edged buildings, the complex is sunk 42.5 feet below street level, creating a crater-like footprint that gives an otherworldly impact. According to the architects, the decision was to avoid interrupting the views of the symbolic Anıtkabir mausoleum in Ankara dedicated to the founder and first president of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. “We are delighted to be located close to the Memorial and Ankara Castle, and our design strategy prioritizes the views from both monuments,” said Semra Uygur.

A pyramid-shaped glass and marble foyer connects two spherical concert halls built with pneumatic formwork. A larger 22,689 square foot egg-shaped frosted glass auditorium can accommodate up to 2,000 guests, while a smaller 8,000 square foot auditorium holds 500 seats. Two staff buildings tilted upwards complete the galaxy of shapes. The duo sums up their approach as “simple Euclidean geometries coming together to balance interior and exterior dynamics”.

The client experience is a clear incentive in the architects’ vision that eschews a singular roof or facade to convey a sculptural structure made up of seemingly independent forms. “We aimed at a different panorama from all angles,” notes Özcan Uygur.

Today, the company’s design is an unintentional statement on a futuristic aesthetic which, in this case, goes back to the days of conceptualizing the very future they intended to convey. As well as emphasizing the myth of a future one step ahead – think flying cars and domestic robots – the project is presented as a visual representation of evolving technologies in architecture and design. “We realized that we had to upgrade the computers when preparing this proposal,” the architects recall, and today the complex has been completed using the latest construction technology, 3D modeling and construction. returned to CNC machining. They note: “We have improved the project several times to bring it up to the standards of the time. In fact, timelessness was expressed as the main motivation behind the jury’s decision to choose the Uighur proposal to begin with. Decades later, the impression seems to endure.

After a smooth opening last December given COVID-19 regulations, the Presidential Symphony Orchestra’s concert hall is on hold for a grand unveiling when the public can safely fill the two wood-clad auditoriums.

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