With Turkey on edge, a look to architecture to bridge divides

For decades, the Atatürk Cultural Center had been an architectural icon.

It stood in one of Turkey’s most dynamic political spaces, Istanbul’s Taksim Square, the scene of countless confrontations, many violent, between protesters and police.

A bastion of arts and culture with a bold facade of metal cladding, the Cultural Center, or AKM, was built in the late 1960s to show the modern face of a new, secular nation envisioned by its revered founder, Mustafa Kamal Atatürk.

But by 2013, at the peak of Turkey’s anti-government Gezi Park protests, the disused, ghost shell of a building had already been closed for years.

When one Turkish artist ventured inside back then, she did not know what to expect. She remembered as a teenager going every Saturday for morning classes, and for exhibitions

Importance of balanceControversial from the startThe architects’ challenge