FIRST SHOT
A Kengo Kuma–designed museum opens in northwestern Turkey.
If you’ve never heard of Eskişehir, that could quickly change. Located along the high-speed rail line between Istanbul and Ankara, the Turkish university town is now home to the Odunpazarı Modern Museum ( omm.art), built to showcase the art collection of locally born construction tycoon Erol Tabanca. While the 1,000-odd works on display are worth the trip alone—they include pieces by emerging and established Turkish talents such as Canan Tolon, İnci Eviner, and Ramazan Bayrakoğlu— so too is the building. Designed by Japan’s Kengo Kuma (the acclaimed architect behind the year-old V& A Dundee museum in Scotland), the striking structure comprises a cluster of multitiered boxes framed by beams of laminated pine, in a nod to the timber-trimmed Ottoman-era houses of the surrounding Odunpazarı district. One of those houses, in fact, now hosts OMM Inn, a 15-room hotel made for museum-goers who wish to linger.