Conservation and Adaptive Re-Use of the Bakirköy Spirit Factory in Istanbul

The Bakirköy Spirit Factory is a late Ottoman industrial building dating from 1917. It was constructed as part of a military complex that produced gunpowder and remained in use until the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Following the construction of a new housing settlement in the district in the 1980s, the dilapidated building became part of a dense residential zone. Its lease to a restaurant in 1986 resulted in the execution of unauthorized works, during which its original machinery and some of its architectural characteristics were lost as a result of inappropriate interventions. The adaptive re-use project that forms the focus of this paper was prepared by members of the Faculty of Architecture at Istanbul Technical University. The building was transformed into a conservatory and cultural centre and was inaugurated in May 2000. The implementation won the National Architectural Prize of the Turkish Chamber of Architects in the Conservation Field in 2001.