Eskisehir, a university town in northwestern Turkey with a population of just over 700,000, has its own contemporary art museum. The head of the construction company Polimex, Erol Tabanca, founded it to house his collection, which he has been collecting for 15 years. Building with an area of 4500 m2 created Kengo Kuma & Associates; the KKAA partner who led the project was Yuki Ikeguchi.
From the very beginning, the Odunapazarı Museum of Contemporary Art (OMM) was supposed to become a kind of springboard for young artists, a platform where they would be seen and heard. At the same time, there was another task - to help the city restore ties with the historical heritage and confirm its status as the "cultural capital" of Central Anatolia - the region where Eskisehir is located.
The appearance of the new museum was predetermined by the history of the place: the site is located in the Odunpazarı district, where the wood market was once located, surrounded by wooden houses and narrow crooked streets. In these traditional buildings, the second floor overhangs the first, forming a cantilever ledge. Kengo Kuma repeated this technique, but used several rectangular volumes at once, unfolding them at different angles - it turned out something like a mound. The size of the blocks is not the same: at the base there are "boxes" of a larger area, on the upper floors - a smaller one.
The central element of the building is an atrium made of pine beams. It runs through all three floors and provides additional lighting to the interior. A similar motif is repeated in the exterior: the outer shell is formed by a "crate" of the same pine timber.
-
Image 
zooming 1/3 Odunpazari Modern Art Museum (OMM) © Batuhan Keskiner
-
zooming 2/3 Odunpazari Modern Art Museum (OMM) © NAARO
-
zooming 3/3 Odunpazari Modern Art Museum (OMM) © NAARO
The permanent exhibition of the museum includes more than a thousand pieces of modern art created from the 1950s to the present day. The main focus is, of course, on Turkish artists. The opening also featured two immersive installations from the British collective Marshmallow Laser Feast, both on the topic of ecology and nature conservation. In addition, there is a work of the Japanese Tanabe Chikuunsai IV, a representative of the famous dynasty of "bamboo crafts". The artist made an openwork sculpture of 6x8 meters out of bamboo - the largest of all that he has ever made.
-
zooming 1/6 Installation by Tanabe Chikuunsai IV, exhibited at OMM © Batuhan Keskiner
-
zooming 2/6 Installation by Tanabe Chikuunsai IV, exhibited at OMM © Kemal Seçkin
-
zooming 3/6 Installation In The Eyes of the Animal, by Marshmallow Laser Feast Courtesy of Marshmallow Laser Feast
-
zooming 4/6 Installation In The Eyes of the Animal, by Marshmallow Laser Feast Courtesy of Marshmallow Laser Feast
-
zooming 5/6 Installation Treehugger, by Marshmallow Laser Feast Courtesy of Marshmallow Laser Feast
-
zooming 6/6 Installation Treehugger, by Marshmallow Laser Feast Courtesy of Marshmallow Laser Feast
