Mimar Sinan Museum and Architecture Center

Holistic Space in the Sections of Sinan’s Buildings

When the architect’s main aim was the central domed space, all architectural elements were used to realize this unity, and Sinan’s creative greatness was revealed in his ability to realize a unique composition in almost every building, despite the dominance of this strictly integrative and convergent vision of the basic space. The main form and proportions of the central baldachin and the symmetrical or asymmetrical arrangement of the peripheral elements flanking it, thus introducing in each building unique directional accents into the space and playing with their spatial effects; the opening of the central dome to the sides with half domes, dome fragments and trumpets, the design of the supporting legs of the baldachin independent of the perimeter walls or combined with them in unique arrangements, the emphasis on the secondary areas surrounding the center, the different uses of elements such as pendentives, trumpet spheres, etc. that provide the transition between the dome and the substructure; the different proportions of the buttress arches and their carriers left within the interior of the building or transferred to the galleries and buttress system surrounding the harim from the outside, the different layouts of the galleries surrounding the under-dome space and their relations with the buttress system; The combination of this formation with a rich windowed wall system unprecedented in Islamic architecture, Byzantine architecture, or even in Renaissance Europe, and the reflection of all these arrangements on the building envelope, each time with effective compositions that unite the superstructure and the substructure within Sinan’s extraordinary architectural vision, creates the classical and homogeneous, yet rich and varied architectural dialect that we call Sinan’s architecture. The mosque space is designed atectonically from the center outwards, from the bottom of the dome to the limits of the space (Kuban 1988).

Sinan used central and linear plan schemes, but when we follow Sinan’s development, we find the stages of the search for an ideal universal space instead of a plan scheme. All of Sinan’s experiments are the search for structural systems that will cover a central space. The domed space in his buildings emphasizes a vertical orientation rather than a horizontal orientation. The only orientation of this space is the rise from the center to the dome.  In each of his buildings, we see that he endeavors to melt the hemispherical form of the dome into the image of a whole. Sinan’s buildings are metaphorically transparent structures because it is possible to read their spatial organization with the same openness inside and outside the building.

Mass Formation and Positioning 
Located at the intersection of the pond axis running in the direction of the Northwest-Southeast axis and the park road that cuts this axis on the South axis, the building aims to be a calm image while establishing a serene relationship with the park and its surroundings. It establishes relationships with the pond axis and the city park that will be formed in different proportions and forms at different layers. 

Sitting at the intersection of these two axes, the mass opens out from the corner point and establishes a relationship with the park and aims to gain identity through its positioning. The central and holistic spatial fiction that forms the main axis of the proposal finds its counterpart in the courtyard. While the courtyard opens outward from one point and establishes a relationship with its surroundings, it turns inward in other directions and aims to create its own publicity. Mimar Sinan Museum and Architecture Center programs are shaped around the courtyard at different levels and layers. The public grading defined by the continuity of open, semi-open and closed spaces is fed by tradition. 

While the two different user groups (user-visitor) defined by the Architecture Center and Mimar Sinan Museum programs reveal the potential of the building to be involved in daily life, it transforms the courtyard from a visited space into a living-living space. In the proposal, the museum and architecture center programs are interpreted as extensions of each other, and it is aimed that they can live together around a single center and feed off each other without losing their autonomy.