The surface covering the halls is not merely a roof, but a green urban plateau that connects different levels of the city. The building recedes, allowing a light, permeable, and public realm to emerge above ground. This approach supports the long-standing efforts around the Zağnos Valley to clear the area and make its cultural heritage more visible.
The City’s Constrained Threshold
Zağnos Valley is an area where Trabzon’s historic and natural memory most strongly converge, surrounded by Atapark, the Gülbahar Hatun Complex, and historic bridges. Despite its rich historical and natural potential, it remains a fragment of the city that is insufficiently integrated into urban life today, cut off from its surroundings by dramatic changes in level and heavy traffic. The starting point of the design, therefore, is not to introduce another dominant building, but to re-establish strong urban connections.
The building program consists of two 400-seat halls, a black-box stage and backstage facilities, foyers, workshops, administrative and support spaces. On a site constrained further by the planned metro line, accommodating the dense program above ground would result in a heavy building mass. Yet while the city needs an open, permeable, and active ground, the program demands a large and enclosed volume.
Receding the Building
This contradiction is resolved not by producing a larger building, but by reducing the building’s presence within the city. The program’s large-volume spaces are gathered beneath elevation +42.00, the highest point of the site. As the architectural mass recedes, public life rises onto the ground. The cultural center thus ceases to be an object that further divides the site and instead becomes a new topography over which urban life continues. The primary element of the project is not the building, but the ground returned to the citizens.
A New Ground Level
The new urban ground begins at the highest elevation, at the level of Gülbahar Hatun Bridge, and streches the existing topography downward to the lowest level, reaching the metro station and the cultural square. Along this path, connections at appropriate street levels accommodate pedestrian flows arriving from Atapark and Rubenis Shopping Mall. A continuous pedestrian topography is established, linking the upper neighborhoods with Zağnos Street, the metro exit, and the lower levels of the valley.
The plateau is not merely a transitional space used to get from one point to another, but a new part of the city—a place to linger, sit, and encounter others, where art and everyday life come together.
A New Cultural Square
The planned metro exit is not merely an access point serving the building, but the starting point of public life. It forms a square where open-air exhibitions and various artistic activities meet the city. Cascading down toward the cultural square, the green landscape becomes an amphitheater where people can sit and watch events. Even at night, the square continues to be part of the urban life.
Rather than creating an enclosed station structure, the metro infrastructure is placed beneath the square; the transportation system does not interrupt urban life, but supports it. To enlarge the square, the surrounding vehicular circulation system has been reinterpreted. Removal of the merging lane connecting İnönü Street to the underpass on Şenol Güneş Street is proposed, as the lane has been observed as underutilized.
Organizing the Program in Section
The stages of the opera and theatre halls are positioned at elevation +26.00. Both halls have a capacity of 400 people; while the opera hall responds to its specific performance requirements with an orchestra pit and balcony, the theatre hall has an independent configuration that supports different forms of staging. The black box, unrestricted by a fixed capacity, is conceived as a flexible space that can adapt to different audience–stage relationships as well as rehearsal and performance arrangements. In shaping the halls, spatial acoustics were considered a fundamental design input alongside capacity and sightlines; geometry of the halls, sectional proportions, and character of the interior surfaces were configured to ensure balanced sound distribution and controlled reflection.
With entrances accessed from different levels of the city, the cultural center becomes a permeable public realm. Foyers are not merely circulation areas serving the halls, but the interior counterpart of the public continuity between the square and the plateau. The main foyer faces the Zağnos Valley through its transparent façade. Independent operation of these different halls also allows the building to function on independent occasions
Two Urban Beacons
By placing the dense program beneath the topography, the soffit towers that remain above ground are surrounded by programs that support the urban plateau. Commercial units, workshops, a shop, administrative spaces, and artist social areas are located here. These two volumes serve as landmarks for the cultural center within the city. Conscious of the historical context in which they are situated, they adopt a small-scale, light, and permeable architectural language. The façade is a graded glass envelope, transitioning from transparent to translucent according to the needs of the program. During the day, the volumes bring the life within out onto the plateau; when illuminated at night, they become two urban beacons
Landscape Becoming Architecture
The project’s ecological approach is not reduced solely to building performance; rather, it is primarily established through the way the site is used. Concentrating the large program beneath the topography, keeping the volumes recessed within the historic setting, providing more open space for the public, and integrating fragmented green areas all contribute to this approach. The planting on the plateau is not a decorative landscape added afterward to the roof of a building, but an integral component of the new urban ground.
