Yesterday, after work, the GF and I went down to Taksim Square where we were going to see a flat that had been renovated by an architect we’d met, to see how we liked the work. It turned out that she hadn’t actually done the renovation at all, just her company had, so that made me slightly less likely to want to go with them.
The flat itself was in a dusty, smoke encrusted old building with the interior stairwell in exposed brick, which looked rather nice here though exposed brick is generally rather overexposed. It felt liked going up a mediaeval tower, though the building itself was probably a century or so old, no more. We webt first to the roof terrace, which reminded me of an old Greek building which was the first we’d seen a flat in – a doer-upper, where the roof terrace was properly falling apart, and looked like it might lose several corners in the event of an earthquake. The view here was not nearly as nice of course – a big sweep over the city, so dusty and grey, rather than the lovely sea and old buildings one gets in Galata and Cihangir. Well, we were not here to buy, though there was another woman, Turkish, who was.
In the flat itself we were only allowed in two at a time for COVID reasons. It was rather startlingly done up in the usual exposed brick industrial style. It seemed rather neatly done, with generally good quality work. All exposed brick, vaulted ceilings to the floor which was mostly the original wood and some pretty patterned tiles, like the encaustic tiles in the older buildings, in the kitchen. The residents were renters, a thin, gentle-eyed bearded man who was a film editor, and his far sharper-looking, wiry and energetic partner. She waited until the property people were out of earshot and said, ‘it looks nice, it’s terrible. Don’t buy it’.
Water leaked from the ceiling, the windows could not be opened because of the noise and pollution but it became very hot as they got direct sunlight; it was inconvenient, the area was terrible. I asked, does it feel safe at night? The gentle-eyed film editor said ‘yes, I never feel unsafe, there is a grocery store in the building as well.’ She gave him a withering look, then looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘No. For a woman, it is not safe.’ Also, she added, the pretty floor tiles were from Ikea.
So we left. I got a couple of good ideas from the renovation though I will avoid that exposed brick and industrial wiring style which will feel very dated shortly, but there were some nice copper fittings and generally the workmanship looked good. However, we asked them to show us a building that the architect had actually worked on, as this was otherwise a rather pointless excursion.
Outside the flat was the great new Taksim Square mosque, which felt fitting.