Esma Sultan is a multi-purpose event and exhibition space in Ortakoy, Istanbul, in the center of the city. The brick palace was built approximately 200 years ago for Esma Sultan, an Ottoman Sultan’s wife as a summer palace. Destroyed by fire over a century ago, the exterior brick walls are all that remain of the building. In 1999, The Marmara Hotel team decided to adaptively reuse the beautiful land-marked as an event and exhibition space. GAD designed a thin but strong stainless steel structured glass box that is suspended within the brick structure to create a covered venue that constantly reminds us the history with multiple transparent layer in the project. The aim of the renovation project is keeping the walls as a framework and support the glass box with stainless steel structure. Glass buildings are usually inappropriate in the countries with hot climate, however, the remain brick material that surrounds the palace made it possible for GAD to introduce this rarely seen architecture in Istanbul.

The brick walls inadvertently create a shelter for the transparent glass box from the sun, rain and wind. The multi-leveled project incorporates a bar and a restaurant on the ground floor and a conference/event space on the second floor entered by a wooden and steel curved staircase. The glass box is hooked to the brick walls with suspension rods, which ensures two separate structures remain equidistant from each other to be strong for extreme weather conditions and earthquakes. The exciting point of the project is from the outside, the building gives the illusion that the palace remains in its original state. From the inside, guests are surrounded by building’s former incarnation with views of the Bosphorus from the original arched brick window frames. The building encourages comparing modern construction methods with old ones used 200 years ago.