earth-covered domes and brick vaults shape liberation museum of manisa in turkey

"In Manisa, western Turkey, the Liberation Museum by Yalin Architectural Design is a memory space shaped by absence, loss, and collective resilience. Developed for the Greater City Municipality of Manisa, the 3,800-square-meter project narrates the local civil resistance movement that emerged independently of central authority between 1918 and 1923, during and after the First World War. The museum is conceived as an experiential landscape, guiding visitors through a spatial narrative of occupation, destruction, liberation, and rebuilding."

"Earth-covered domes, brick vaults, and sunken courtyards give the building a grounded, almost geological presence. Instead of standing apart from its context, the museum appears embedded within it, its green roof folding into the surrounding landscape. Brick, used extensively throughout the project, forms thick walls, stepped seating, arched ceilings, and long corridors. The repetition of vaults produces a rhythmic spatial sequence that feels neither ceremonial."

Liberation Museum in Manisa occupies 3,800 square meters and frames local civil resistance between 1918 and 1923 through architecture and landscape. The building reads as an experiential terrain: earth-covered domes, brick vaults, sunken courtyards, and a green roof integrate the museum into its surroundings. Repeated brick vaults, thick walls, stepped seating, and long corridors create rhythmic spatial sequences that guide visitors along a narrative of occupation, burning, liberation, and rebuilding. Narrow passages opening into larger chambers and filtered daylight enact emotional shifts from compression and uncertainty to endurance and cautious hope. The exhibition strategy avoids dramatization, sustaining a mood of resilient optimism.

Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine