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Turkiye's Presidential Symphony Orchestra Concert Hall, the CSO Ada Ankara

Mixing Shapes.

The gorgeous and modern cultural center is comprised of triangular, round and rectangular shapes. A different mix of angles are viewed from every vantage point.

Görkem Yavuz / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Listening in the Round.

The auditorium of the Main Concert Hall features 360-degree views, and every seat provides optimal acoustics.

Görkem Yavuz / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

In Ankara, Turkiye1, the Presidential Symphony Orchestra Concert Hall and Cultural Center, commonly referred to as the CSO Ada Ankara, is a new Turkish landmark and feat of modern architecture built in the heart of the metropolitan capital city. It took almost 30 years of work and planning for the campus to become a reality. It is the brainchild of Uygur Architects, who won a nationwide contest with their timeless yet modern and forward-thinking design.

Two Monolithic Domes house two concert halls, the Main Hall, which seats 2,023 people, and the Blue Hall, which seats 512. The complex also features a museum, gift shop, practice rooms and an impressive triangular-prism-shaped public lobby bridging the two domed auditoriums. The campus is the new home of the Turkish Presidential Symphony Orchestra (or CSO from the Turkish Cumhurbaşkanlığı Senfoni Orkestrası).

A Complicated Shape.

The Airform for the main concert hall is a complicated shape to inflate. It was patterned and fabricated at Monolithic’s architectural textiles manufacturing plant in Texas.

Aubrey South / Monolithic Commons / CC BY 4.0

Monolithic fabricated the Airforms used to build the auditoriums. The largest of the two concert halls is egg-shaped and is sunken 42.5 feet (13 m) below street level. Its major axis (the widest part) is 186 feet (57 m) across, its minor axis is 141 feet (43 m), and it is 103 feet (31 m) tall. The smaller auditorium is a three-quarter sphere—96 feet (29 m) in diameter at floor level and 77 feet (24 m) tall.

The CSO Ada Ankara is 673,250 square feet (62,547 m²), and the campus of the artistic hub sits on 14 acres (5.5 ha) at the center of the Turkish capital.

Since its official opening in 2021, the landmark cultural center has hosted international symphonies like the Budapest Festival Orchestra and many solo and group artists from around the world, like the pianist Islam Manafov from Azerbaijan. In addition, an international flair can be found in many of the concerts given by the CSO, such as multiple performances dedicated to Elvis and an entire night devoted to ABBA!


1Monolithic has adopted Turkey’s preferred spelling of the country’s name, Turkiye, pronounced tur-key-yay. ↩︎

Centrally Located.

The CSO Ada Ankara was built to stand out and blend in. The architects endeavored not to obstruct views of other important Turkish landmarks like the Kocatepe Mosque, the largest mosque in Ankara, whose spires can be seen between the new cultural center’s cantilevered rectangular and dome structures.

Görkem Yavuz / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

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