Architecture practice Grimshaw Architects have been announced as the winners of a competition to design the Koç Contemporary Art Museum in Istanbul. The winning design features an extension of the original museum in the form of geometric volumes made from materials that reinforce the Ottoman style, namely a stone coloured mosaic-tiled façade and exotic woods within the galleries.
Organised by the Vehbi Koç Foundation, an organization that works to sustain and promote cultural and social life in Turkey, the competition was developed to design and build a venue in the Beyoglu area of Istanbul which serves the broadest possible audience while providing an ideal setting to conserve, preserve and restore the foundation’s own growing art collection. Work on the museum will start this year with the opening scheduled for 2016.