Project Name: Beymen Tersane

Location: Istanbul, Turkey

Design Team: OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture)

Building Area: 12,000 m²

Completion Year: 2026

Image Copyright: Marco Cappelletti Studios

Design Features: OMA has completed Beymen Tersane, a new department store for Turkish luxury retailer the Beymen Group, housed within a cluster of former imperial shipbuilding halls along Istanbul's Golden Horn. The project marks the Dutch firm's first completed work in Turkey and stands as one of the most compelling examples of adaptive reuse in the country's recent architectural history.

The site carries extraordinary historical weight. The Tersane-i Amire served as the Ottoman Empire's principal naval arsenal from the sixteenth century until the empire's dissolution in 1922, and the complex remained operational through the 1970s before falling into decades of abandonment. The project forms part of a broader waterfront redevelopment that is reconnecting the city to a long-inaccessible stretch of the Golden Horn.

OMA's design introduces a series of freestanding gallery structures inside the existing masonry halls, each with its own distinct geometry and materiality. The galleries are traversed both longitudinally and transversally, weaving together into a single uninterrupted horizontal retail plane. By refusing the conventional stacked-floor typology, OMA eliminates the commercial hierarchy that ordinarily dictates which brands and products occupy prime positions, placing every department on an equal footing beneath the original industrial roof.

The result is a retail landscape that feels simultaneously ancient and contemporary, where Ottoman brickwork and steel shipyard frames provide the backdrop for luxury goods and commissioned art installations. Rather than erasing the past to make way for commerce, OMA has used commerce as the instrument through which a long-inaccessible fragment of Istanbul is finally returned to public life.

Design Team: OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) was founded in 1975 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, by Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis, Madelon Vriesendorp, and Zoe Zenghelis. The firm occupies a singular position within contemporary architecture, operating simultaneously as a design practice, a research institute, and a platform for cultural and urban discourse. It is widely regarded as one of the most influential architectural offices of the past half-century.

OMA's completed works span a broad typological range across cultural institutions, commercial complexes, residential buildings, infrastructure, and urban masterplans. Notable projects include the Seattle Central Library, CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, the Fondazione Prada in Milan, and the Taipei Performing Arts Center.

The Beymen Tersane project was led by OMA Partners Ellen van Loon and Iyad Alsaka, with Project Architects Anita Ernodi and Saskia Simon. With offices across Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and beyond, OMA brings together architects, designers, and researchers from across the world, addressing the complex demands of the contemporary built environment through an interdisciplinary and collaborative practice.