Juliette Rossant looks at the move out of the concrete jungle — into

Juliette R ossant looks a t the move out o f the
concrete ju n g le
into wooden houses
—
n the typical terrace house of a 19th-century Istanbul
merchant, rooms were small and formal, and not suited to
1today’s brighter jeune Turque. But as the exodus from the
city’s neo-medieval concrete jungle gains momentum — and prices for
the spacious seaside yah and hilltop köşk pass the million dollar mark
— it is the strangely eclectic wooden homes tucked away in the
narrow streets of small Bosphorus hillside towns like Arnavutköy,
Emirgân and Rumeli Hisarı that offer the affordable
alternative to a city flat.
For Duygu and Oğuz öztuzcu, living in a wooden house was a
foregone conclusion. They both grew up in wooden houses in the
Black Sea town of Samsun and have since lived in Sweden. Oğuz
Öztuzcu is an architect and it has taken him five years to renovate the
house in Arnavutköy (pictured on this page). He kept the original
exterior but put the emphasis inside on simplicity, with lots of pine
and simple clean lines. To make the most of the existing Romanian
timber floor on the top floor, he tore down the partition walls and
created a large comfortable living space.
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rem Erez’s house (above and right) is one of four attached
houses built by a Greek cabinet maker. They dominate a
1steep cobbled street in Emirgan like a Victorian mansion.
Erez, an architect, spent six years renovating her house and dealing
with the stringent requirements of the Landmarks Commission.
The beams and floorboards were rotten so she decided to rebuild from
scratch using concrete and breeze blocks faced with wood. The
exterior is almost identical to the original but the interior has been
completely changed to create “a feeling of space”.
Erez has used antiques and kilims to recapture the atmosphere of an
old Ottoman house. In the living-room she rebuilt a wall cabinet from
a 19th-century town house in the Black Sea village of Safranbolu and
for the alcove with its high windows she bought white couches
reminiscent of an Ottoman sedir.
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pek Aksügür-Duben lives in a 19th-century house in Rumeli
Hisarı (pictured above and right) built by an Armenian
' carpenter. In her sunny, airy living-room fragrant of
pinewood and turpentine, Duben, who is a painter and art historian,
explains her philosophy of restoration. “The challenge was to
modernise the house without ruining it — to respect the
essence of an old building.”
With her husband Alan, who is an historian of 19th-century domestic
life, and their architect Yalçın Özüekren, Duben was determined to
keep as much as possible of the old structure and the interior floor
plan. The walls are painted white to emphasise the warm colour of the
wooden floor inside and the cool grey Marmara marble in the small
courtyard outside with its pretty fountain.
To create more space and light and to enjoy the magnificent view over
the Bosphorus, they opened up the front rooms to make an informal
kitchen-cum-dining-room downstairs and a large sitting-room with a
glorious bay window upstairs. □
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Kişisel Arşivlerde Istanbul Belleği
Taha Toros Arşivi