Arch | Strata | Antioch

Arch | Strata | Antioch is the documentary feature of EAA’s Antakya Museum Hotel project in Antioch, Turkey. Between June 2013 and December 2014, during the most critical phase of the construction of the museum hotel, Sarraf | Galeyan | Mekanik team (M. Can Tanyeli, Erhun Erdoğan and E. Seda Kayım) collected tens of hours of footage and tens of thousands of timelapse photographs from the construction site in Antioch. Later, this project was continued in-house at Emre Arolat Architects, and became a part of the project’s showcase at Palazzo Bembo in “Time Space Existence” exhibition as part of La Biennale di Venezia in 2016.

The 11’09” long documentary film features never-before seen footage and photographs of the mosaics discovered inside the site, especially the one beneath the infamous G2 pillar, and showcases how their placement affected the design of the building even after the construction had already picked up significant speed. The film tells the story of how each individual piece of the construction was assembled and transferred into the site, particularly the container-style room units. Using time-lapse shots from the assembly line of the hotel rooms and their transfers to the construction site on the streets of Antioch, the documentary follows the story of a single room unit, showing how it was made, how it was transferred, and how it was placed on the steel beams to await decoration. In addition to this industrial process, there is the ongoing mission to preserve and protect the archeological remains. While the massive structure keeps on rising overhead, academics and preservation experts continue working on the site; documenting every stone, preserving every single shard of mosaic, cleaning every marble surface and getting ready for the big public reveal to come.

The second, 02’30” long looping film, meant as a complimentary visual aid to the cutaway model in the exhibition, depicts the construction process of the museum hotel in all its glory in full 4K resolution. Composed of videos and photographs captured by both Sarraf | Galeyan | Mekanik, Cemal Emden and EAA Team, it focuses on visual details of the extremely complicated construction process the building has undergone.

The third and final, 07’30” long film is an interview with architectural historian Uğur Tanyeli as he situates this grand project in the episteme of modernist architecture. The film focuses on the dichotomies of conservation and capitalistic architectural design in a historic environment and theoretical approach of the project, as Tanyeli seeks to establish it as the last meaningful attempt to create a modular ‘metabolist’ structure, which as an idea garnered the attention of modern architecture in the 70’s.

Directed by:
M. Can Tanyeli

With the help of:
E. Seda Kayım and Erhun Erdoğan

Additional photography by:
Cemal Emden and EAA Team

EAA Emre Arolat Architects:
http://www.emrearolat.com

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