Sheraton Hotels in Turkey

Juliette R o ssa n t looks a t the m ove out o f the

concrete ju n g le

—

into wooden houses

I

n the typical terrace house of a 19th-century Istanbulmerchant, rooms were small and formal, and not suited to 1 today’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.

I

rem Erez’s house (above and right) is one of four attached houses built by a Greek cabinet maker. They dominate a 1 steep 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.

İ

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. □

110 TURQUOISE

Kişisel Arşivlerde Istanbul Belleği Taha Toros Arşivi