Guide
The Silahtaraga power station was the first city-scale power station in the Ottoman state. Built on the Golden Horn, İstanbul's oldest industrial district, it supplied the city with electricity from 1911 until 1983, and then stood rusting. It was allocated to İstanbul Bilgi University under a protocol with the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources on 1 May 2004, renovated between 2004 and 2007, and opened as santralistanbul on 8 September 2007.
The Energy Museum is the power station itself, kept rather than cleared. The idea grew out of what to do with the machinery of the first engine hall, built in 1910 and shut down in 1983, as it began to corrode. The turbine-generator sets — made by AEG, Brown Boveri, Siemens and Thomson Houston — can be visited in engine halls 1 and 2, and the switchboards from which electricity was generated and distributed to different parts of İstanbul stand in the control room. The university describes it as Türkiye's first industrial archaeology museum; it received the European Museum Academy's DASA award in 2012.
The ground floor is built for hands rather than for looking. Twenty-two interactive units make up the Energy Play Area, where you can generate your own electricity, become a battery, make magnetic sculptures, wrestle with an obstinate suitcase and touch thousands of volts without harm.
The rest of the site is worth knowing about before you go, because it is a campus rather than a single building: the Main Gallery, which holds contemporary art exhibitions and cultural events and won an International Architecture Award in 2010; cafes and restaurants converted from the power station's old repair shops and stores; and the university's own teaching buildings.
