The story of Atatürk Cultural Center (in Turkish: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi – AKM) dates back to the 1930s. Auguste Perret designed the first version of the project and started the construction in the late ’30s. However, war and financial problems halted the construction. The project continued in the early 1950s with major updates and extensions. Faruk Akçer and Rüknettin Güney were responsible for this second version. Hayati Tabanlıoğlu designed the last version of the building. He studied the previous version extensively, resembling the architectural taste of the ’50s. (source: Boyut Yayınları Mimarlık ve Kent Dizisi İstanbul 1950-2003).

AKM building is famous for its plain facade. I started looking at this building much more nowadays. Below are some photos of it;

The famous facade composition resembles a theater curtain. Unfortunately, the building is under restoration and has been closed since 2008. I think that this old facade is a good exercise for a parametric facade study. Below is a simple Grasshopper definition that plays with the metal elements of the building facade, moving them in the Z direction and making minimal cantilevers in detail. You should add a curve attractor in order to see the facade reacting to it. Finally, I utilized a cluster to clean up the zigzag base grid.

The facade components seem to self-organize to break the system of the similarizing pattern, taking it down eventually. However, the new Atatürk Cultural Center has an architectural answer to the old one. You can rebuild the definition by looking at the definition above. However, if you want to support this website by downloading my Grasshopper file; would you consider being my Patreon? Here is the link to my Patreon page including the working Grasshopper files for the Atatürk Cultural Center facade and more.