We’re following the trail of our cultural heritage hidden on the walls and buildings of our city. These works, signed by some of Turkey’s most prominent artists, await us at the intersections where modern architecture and art converge.
Our readers might remember our piece titled The Quiet Open-Air Museum: İMÇ. Following our article about the works of world-renowned Turkish artists adorning the walls of İMÇ, one of the city’s hidden corners, we continue tracing the path of ceramic and mosaic panels meticulously concealed within the architecture of the city, stretching from Sirkeci to Karaköy, from Beşiktaş to Kadıköy. This time, our path also crosses with Nurtaç Buluç, the founder of the City Panels Archive.
The Artistic Trail Starting in Sirkeci
Our first stop is the Doğubank Business Inn in Sirkeci. The mosaic panel on the side façade of this inn, commissioned in 1953 by businessman İzzet Şefikzade, bears the signature of Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu. This work, which is Bedri Rahmi’s first mosaic panel created for a public space, also stands as one of the earliest examples of the collaboration between architecture and art in the 1950s. Eyüboğlu, one of the most significant figures in Turkish painting—as well as a writer and poet—played a pioneering role during this period in fostering solidarity between architects and artists.
Speaking of his mosaic panels, which appear on numerous public buildings, Nurtaç Buluç, the art historian and archivist who founded the City Panels Archive, says: “Our world-renowned artist emphasizes that art can only escape a nomadic existence if it is integrated with architecture.”
Buluç shares the following excerpt from Bedri Rahmi’s article titled On Mosaic, published in Cumhuriyet newspaper on 13 March 1952:
“Lately, the idea of collaboration between architects and painters has started to spread and take root, being implemented in America and Europe. It is certain that what provides any painting with the best light, the longest lifespan, the largest crowds of viewers—in short, the power to merge with life—is architecture itself. Without the touch of an architect, a painting is doomed to live a nomadic life, or more precisely, to be buried alive without ever truly living, or to fall into slumber in the dim halls of museums.”
The fact that this work, which inspired many artists of its time, has survived to the present day is no small feat. In fact, it was only about four or five years ago that renovation work carried out on the exterior walls of the Doğubank Business Inn led to the piece adorning the inn’s walls being covered over with insulation materials and replaced with the word “Doğubank.” The mosaic panel, dating from 1957, was restored to its original state after architect and conservator Seda Özen Bilgili noticed this damage and filed a petition with the Istanbul Regional Council for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage No. 4, which subsequently carried out an investigation.
From Sirkeci to Karaköy: Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu’s Mosaics
After Doğubank, our next stop is Karaköy. There, at the ferry exit of the Karaköy underpass, Istanbulites are once again greeted by a relief created by Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu on the façade of the Aksu Business Inn. The building, commissioned in 1965 by Salih Tatlıcı, is adorned with two works by Bedri Rahmi—one on the exterior and the other in the interior.
Sadly, the Tatlıcılar Relief, which the artist designed along the building’s exterior façade using both concrete and glass, is now on the brink of succumbing to the wear and tear of the years. Amidst massive advertising billboards that crowd the space, its abstract geometric and repetitive motifs, catching the eyes of those who look closely, are now being held together by a mesh net in an attempt to preserve the falling pieces. While photographing this urgently needed work for restoration, a building staff member approached us and said, “It’s falling apart, but they’re asking for a lot of money. Who’s going to pay that much? No one would spend that kind of money to have it restored.” Yet it is essential that this precious relief—so far undervalued and squeezed between enormous advertisement boards—be swiftly restored before it loses any more of its pieces. By contrast, Bedri Rahmi’s other mosaic panel in the building, Kağnı (The Oxcart), is in better and more protected condition than the Tatlıcılar Relief. Produced in a Cubist abstract style and incorporating figurative and folkloric elements, this work continues to quietly greet visitors to the Aksu Business Inn.
Let’s conclude this section of our feature series tracing artistic marks in public spaces with these examples from Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu. Now, we’ll hand things over to Nurtaç Buluç, the founder of the City Panels Archive, whose meticulous archival work and carefully curated posts on social media over the past five years have brought awareness to the city’s cultural heritage. Let’s listen to what this young researcher has to share about the details of this invaluable archive, which holds information on nearly 700 ceramic and mosaic panels by 90 different artists and studios across 20 cities in Turkey…
The Birth of the City Panels Archive
This year, the City Panels Archive celebrates its fifth anniversary. Still, for those who aren’t familiar with it at all, let’s rewind to the very beginning of your story. How did the idea of creating such a comprehensive archive first come about?
The City Panels Archive is a digital archival project documenting examples of the collaboration between architecture and art in Turkey, which began to be implemented from the 1950s onwards. Its story began in 2019 as a personal and independent archival initiative by two art historians and archivists. What started purely as a hobby and curiosity about ceramic and mosaic art gradually transformed into a professionally motivated project, and today, it has come to mean much more than simply being a website archive.
Photographs of these works found on architectural structures were scattered across social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. Our goal in embarking on this project was both to research and identify the artists and stories behind these works—which were often anonymous—and to gather this information under a single umbrella, preserving it in one place.
In short, our aim was to determine the place of ceramic and mosaic panels—which serve as elements of urban and cultural memory—in the journey of architectural and art history, and to make them visible on a single digital interface through metadata and cataloging efforts. Because we live in Istanbul, we first began researching panels in neighborhoods like Kadıköy, Üsküdar, Beyoğlu, Beşiktaş, Fatih, and Şişli, wandering the streets and trying to discover works hidden in side streets and tucked-away corners. Sometimes, these panels were designed for the exterior façade or the entrance of a building; other times, they were placed inside an apartment building, near elevator lobbies. In other words, we often set out without knowing exactly what kind of artwork we would encounter.
Although we began this project personally and focused on Istanbul, we aimed to transform it into a crowdsourced initiative by launching the City Panels website and social media accounts. Thanks to our announcements and posts, many of our followers across different cities in Turkey began to notice these works on architectural structures and share their photos with us.
Today, the City Panels Archive holds information on nearly 700 ceramic and mosaic panels by 90 different artists or studios, spanning 20 different cities in Turkey.
The Story of Art in Public Spaces
To make this project clearer for readers, it’s necessary to say a few things about the story of art in public spaces. The shifting political and economic conditions following World War II also influenced architectural thinking from the 1940s onward. Beginning in Europe and gradually implemented in Turkey as well, modern architectural structures, whose forms had become more simplified, began to integrate ceramic and mosaic artworks—produced under the influence of contemporary art movements—as plastic elements to enliven the façades of brutalist buildings. It was crucial for such panels to be integrated into the architecture and to align with the building’s intended purpose. For example, in the ceramic panel works that Beril Anılanmert designed for the Armed Forces Rehabilitation Center, it was recommended that she avoid using colors that might remind patients of the trauma they had experienced. As in this example, the connection between a building’s function and the theme of its panel was always carefully considered.
It’s often said that the collaboration between architecture and art arose as a solution to the uniformity and starkness brought about by modernism, aiming to add color and value to buildings by incorporating the plastic arts. Although this interpretation might seem somewhat naïve, it is partly true. What we call public art serves the purpose of aestheticizing spaces and increasing viewers’ awareness. Therefore, a work of art in a public space strengthens people’s connections with their surroundings and helps to create a collective memory. Every society builds its own memory. Moreover, this constructible and consciously created phenomenon has a strong relationship between power and memory.
To summarize, works of art transferred to public spaces can be interpreted from two different perspectives. First, the façades of these large-scale buildings, which had become more simplified, transformed into arenas of propaganda for the construction of national identity after World War II. Second, it can be read as arising from the financial concerns of artists who, due to the absence of a market platform where they could sell their works, began placing their art in architectural structures as a new area of employment.
What Sparked the Growth of the Archive?
I believe the reason is that these artworks, which were designed for society through public spaces, were forgotten over time, and people didn’t know why they existed on these structures. The project’s focused attention on ceramic and mosaic panels, combined with its visibility on social media, began to attract attention. This made people curious about the panels they passed by every day and helped them realize that they were living alongside valuable works of art.
As a result of this growing awareness, we began receiving more and more photographs of panels from people living in different cities and neighborhoods via social media and email. Our archive’s database has grown richer and continues to expand.
What Would You Say About the Place and Importance of This Archive?
The City Panels Archive centers on tangible realities—architectural structures and ceramic-mosaic panels—but it’s important to understand its deeper subtext. The project does more than merely document these works. Its primary goal is to collect, preserve, and make accessible a visual, oral, and written heritage of information and documentation. By doing so, it becomes a crowdsourced initiative that contributes to the cultural memory of urban life.
At the same time, as part of the project, we’ve started engaging with the artists behind the panels. We compiled the archive of İlgi Adalan, the ceramic artist with the most panels in our archive, and conducted oral history interviews, eventually creating a website called www.ilgiadalan.com. Similarly, this process has evolved organically to include archival and oral history work with other ceramic artists. In İzmir, we met with Mehmet Tüzüm Kızılcan, Bingül Başarır, and Mustafa Tunçalp, listening to their stories. Through archiving, documentation, and oral history efforts, City Panels has developed its independent body of work further.
Photo: Nurtaç Buluç
Turkey’s Map of Ceramic and Mosaic Art
Could you elaborate a bit on the archive? For example, which cities, places, and artists stand out the most?
Because the first examples of architectural-art collaborations emerged in Istanbul and Ankara, these cities naturally take the lead, followed by Izmir. Beyond these cities, there are also examples in Adana, Antalya, Balıkesir, Burdur, Bursa, Çanakkale, Denizli, Edirne, Eskişehir, Kocaeli, Kayseri, Malatya, Mersin, and Yalova. Early examples were generally designed for buildings such as hotels, business centers, hospitals, bank branches, universities, restaurants, factories, cultural centers, and apartment buildings—but among these, the most extensive collaborations appear in apartment buildings.
As for the artists, early figures include Füreya Koral, Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, Eren Eyüboğlu, Ferruh Başağa, Sabri Berkel, Ercüment Kalmık, and Sadi Diren. Later generations feature names like Cevdet Altuğ, Attila Galatalı, Gencay Kasapçı, Bingül Başarır, Erdoğan Ersen, Hamiye Çolakoğlu, Nasip İyem, Ülkü Bora, Erdinç Bakla, Ruzin Gerçin, Arzu Karamani, Mustafa Tunçalp, Seniye Fenmen, Cemil Eren, Mehmet Tüzüm Kızılcan, İlgi Adalan, Jale Yılmabaşar, Tülin Ayta, Yalçın Tokay, Mustafa Pilevneli, Mediha Akarsu, Beril Anılanmert, and many others whose names I might not immediately recall, all of whom have produced ceramic and mosaic panel works.
Istanbul’s Artistic Memory
Let’s talk a bit about Istanbul… The İMÇ Bazaar is, of course, a well-known example. But there are also significant examples in other parts of the city, such as Kadıköy and 4. Levent. What would you say about these examples, which span different types of buildings?
In Istanbul, examples like the İMÇ Bazaar and 4. Levent—designed for open public spaces—represent some of the early collaborations between modern architecture and a new artistic language. While the architectural style is modernist, the panels incorporate folkloric, traditional, and cultural elements from Anatolia, expressing local motifs through an international artistic vocabulary. The city’s spaces become indicators of this modern language; works that might be exhibited in galleries and art venues are also used to spread modern art within public architecture. Instead of waiting for visitors in a gallery, these works are displayed in public structures embedded in people’s daily routines, claiming their own space. They exist not merely as finished, static works on display but as living, evolving experiences.
Among the first artists to design ceramic panels for Turkey’s modernist buildings, Füreya Koral stated that her inspiration came from the Turkish tradition of tilework. Arguing for the necessity of a revolution, she referenced calligraphy, tile, and textile patterns, using stylized abstract designs to make a significant artistic leap. Her works, driven by the idea of enhancing architectural spaces, introduced abstraction into contemporary architecture. “On Anatolian soil, what has tradition is not form itself, but the tile adorning the wall,” she said. We can observe this philosophy in her abstract ceramic panel at the İMÇ Bazaar.
Similarly, Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, who produced early examples, began his art-architecture journey in the early 1940s with mural paintings. Drawing inspiration from Byzantine mosaic decoration in Istanbul’s monuments, he laid the groundwork for his artistic practice. In 1953, he created his first public mosaic panel on the exterior of the Doğubank Business Center in Sirkeci. Eyüboğlu argued that art could only escape its nomadic fate if integrated with architecture, often incorporating folkloric elements from Anatolia into his work.
However, starting in the 1980s, as the role of contractors became more dominant, the artistic freedom once afforded to artists began to diminish. From then on, works were increasingly commissioned by apartment owners or contractors, who often ordered panels simply to add a unique touch to a building or to install them as decorative objects, much like hanging a painting. While artists’ personal styles can still be recognized in these works, by the 1980s and 1990s, this practice had become more of a mass production process.
Urban Transformation and the Preservation of Artworks
One of the most frequently discussed topics in Istanbul in recent years has been urban transformation. How are mosaics in buildings slated for demolition protected—or are they protected at all? Are there examples in the city?
One of the positive aspects of social media is its ability to create awareness around specific issues. Thanks to the posts shared by Şehrin Panoları and other architecture and art platforms, public sensitivity toward artworks in public spaces has increased. As a result, significant efforts have been made to share information about artworks that have suffered serious damage or are facing demolition. Such cases are often communicated to relevant or authorized parties via social media platforms or email.
Of course, it’s hard to know how much protection these works actually receive following such notifications—perhaps only a few manage to be saved. However, one of the most important steps taken in this area has been the Municipal Council Decision of 25 January 2024, enacted through the collaboration of KUDEB and the Kadıköy Municipality. This decision mandates the protection of artworks in buildings undergoing urban transformation within Kadıköy. We owe great thanks to everyone involved in making this happen. It’s important to acknowledge the community’s sensitivity in bringing such a decision into effect.
Public art practices allow art to be experienced not merely in museums or galleries but in everyday life, in places accessible to the public, transforming viewers into participants. For now, this protective decision only applies to buildings within the Kadıköy Municipality’s jurisdiction. I hope that, in the near future, it will be implemented for buildings all across Turkey.
(Click here to read the article titled “IMÇ: The Silent Open-Air Museum.”)
