The main design task of the Galeri Nev project is to install a proper art gallery in a single open space that is formed of exposed glazed façades on the three sides. This entrance floor shop, being on a sloped terrain and within a valley meadow extending to embassy gardens, has a picturesque view, rare for Ankara. Possessing the view while creating a secluded exhibition environment is the contradiction that the project is based on. The idea is, basically, to place an introverted exhibition area besides the only existing wall and to locate other functions on the exterior side overlooking the landscape.
The street façade side is designed with the "wall-door" idea, which tricks on the Turkish idiom that means to face an unopened door. In the first sense, wall is door, as the visitor enters directly from the glass façade towards a freestanding wall constituting a linear space that leads to the exhibition on one side and to the offices on the other. In the second sense, wall is door, as the freestanding wall can actually rotate around an asymmetrical pivot beam and on rollers placed under the steel-frame structure. Wall-door is not only useful for letting large exhibition pieces to enter the gallery but also presents a spatial variable that can be placed at different rotations in different art exhibitions: When the rotation is larger the exhibition space is divided into two areas and when it is rotated with an angle of 90 degrees the wall can form a continuous surface with the other fixed wall.
The major gallery area is an idealized abstract exhibition space with its linear divisions, details and lighting stretch ceiling. The barrisol ceiling provides different levels of homogeneous light and the spot railing grid permits special object and picture illumination. Freestanding walls and niches define the exhibition space. The voids between these walls frame the view outside. When one passes from this secluded and idealized space to the side areas, a different experience is displayed.
The office of the gallery is formed of a corridor like space extending by the balcony façade as a continuous worktable and library for five people placed within a niche. In order to preserve office material during the exhibition openings the niche is designed such that it is enclosed by roller blinds. Then all the open spaces of the gallery become part of the exhibition. The only "room" of the gallery in the classical sense apart from the services is the manager's office. This room is defined partially by glass partitions and it has prospects to the meadow on three sides. At the back of this room is an open space that is accessed through a corridor from the exhibition, which is a multi-purpose area reserving the printed artworks. The north balcony façade of the gallery is formed of existing sliding glass surfaces and when these are opened at summer the places on this side extend to the outside. In this case why the street on which the gallery is located is named as kırlangıç (swallow) becomes clear from the peeps heard. Galeri Nev Kırlangıç is designed to present a threshold between nature and culture. As in each exhibition the content of art and in each season the nature of the meadow changes that multiplies experiences.
Design Team: Namık Erkal, Onur Özkoç
Photographs: Duygu Tüntaş, İbrahim Karakütük
