Location: Ankara, Turkey.

Architect: Erkal.

The Museum and Center for Biodiversity building is located on the Hacettepe University’s Beytepe Campus in Ankara, which is under pressure from urbanization and land fragmentation. The building aims to preserve the natural resource of the interconnected valleys and ridges that extend to neighboring campus lands. The building is situated on a slope facing east and is grafted within a forestation zone. The research facilities include collections, laboratories, offices for scientists, administration, library, and a meeting hall. The museum is composed of exhibition halls for Zoology, Medical Sciences, and Anthropology on upper and ground floors. The lower floor will house the Botanical exhibit, as these spaces are connected with the gardens in the topography, in which a set of greenhouses are planned for future development. The architectonic logic of open and closed spaces follows an order of geometric compartmentation which is manifest in numerous biological phenomena. The exhibition materials falling under the topic of biodiversity belong to a very wide spectrum of scientific disciplines and a broad variation of sizes, dimensions, and scales. Therefore the spaces are desired to be fragmented so that they could be thematized separately, yet continuous and connected for coherence. The Museum and Center for Biodiversity building is poised to go beyond its program that serves science and academia, and accept the challenges of land preservation and cultivating scientific communities.

Photo credit: Orhan Kolukısa – YERÇEKİM.