Museum Gazhane Towards the City Exhibition

Hasanpaşa Gazhanesi, one of the important industrial heritages of Istanbul dating back 130 years, was idle for the last 30 years. The building complex was re-functionalized in 2021 with the organization of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and gifted to the city as “Museum Gazhane”. Gazhane Environmental Volunteers, founded by the neighborhood residents who has been supporting the transformation and has been working consistently for many years to protect this valuable urban space for the public benefit, left an inspiring example of solidarity for urban rights for the history of Istanbul.

“Towards the City”, one of the opening exhibitions of Museum Gazhane, is a comprehensive analysis of “urbanization” by visual artist Serkan Taycan, starting from the countryside, reaching from the peripheries of Istanbul to its squares and connecting to a walking route on the Canal Istanbul line. Planlux participated in the development of the architectural lighting design project of the exhibition which brings together the artist’s works called Habitat, Shell, Agora and Between Two Seas.

The lighting design of the exhibition, whose material, color and light decisions change along with the works, took its inspiration from this character transformation in the space, which invites the visitors to a 4-stage journey with the curved path created.

The gallery space has a hybrid lighting scheme designed with natural light from the entrance façade and rail spots placed on the ceiling. The exhibited materials were highlighted by special projectors that can shoot light with the focusing framing method. CRI 95 LED light sources with high color recovery efficiency were preferred to increase color perceptibility. Luminaires that can serve more than one scenario were used with the DALI feature and on-board control system. With the lighting infrastructure created by Planlux, the space is ready to provide a quality light atmosphere for future exhibitions.