Conservation, Exhibition Design, and Spatial Legibility in a Historic Palace—Museum: Comparative Spatial Intervention Analysis of the Ibrahim Pasha Palace (Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts), Istanbul

Abstract

Adaptive reuse of historic buildings as museums places conservation work and exhibition design in the same fabric. The two are still usually judged apart, and the spatial legibility of the host building is rarely scored room by room. This article develops Comparative Spatial Intervention Analysis (CSIA) and applies it to nine spaces in the Ibrahim Pasha Palace in Istanbul. The palace has housed the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts since 1983, and it was restored and redisplayed in 2012–2014. Four ordinal criteria, scored from 0 to 3 and drawn from the Venice Charter, the Nara Document on Authenticity, the Burra Charter, and Brandi’s theory of restoration, compare pre-restoration photographs (T0) with post-restoration photographs (T2). A further reading of the museum in use (T3), taken from the official virtual museum, is indicative only. The scores are set beside 85 public visitor comments, from 2008 to 2026, retained where the visitor’s own wording was stored. CSIA totals rise by 3 to 11 points on a 12-point scale. The former Hippodrome boiler room shows the largest gain. Fabric-led rooms keep the architecture visible where cases are freestanding and light follows the vaults. Object-dense rooms gain less, where large panels or controlled darkness leave the wall in the background. In the comments, the collection is the main positive topic. Visitor comments on the palace’s architectural fabric focus on the Hippodrome remains and the courtyard, while three comments raise concerns about authenticity. Spatial legibility in this palace is specific to the room. The comments record what visitors name. The legibility score is the reading of the photographs.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Buildings, 2026 · DOI ↗