Stone-Ideas.com 
Completion was originally planned for the 100th anniversary of the Turkish Republic in 2023. The project certainly has the potential to adorn the nation: we are talking about the new Central Bank building (Türkiye Cumhuriyet Merkez Bankası, TCMB) in Istanbul, a skyscraper with a height of 325 m and 60 floors, which will be the tallest building of its kind in Turkey.
Around it, the Istanbul International Financial Center (CBRT) is also being built, with a total area of around 1.5 million m², several other national and international bank buildings, a shopping mall, and a 5-star hotel with 325 rooms, to name just the very large sub-projects.
The Central Cank tower is designed by Vizzion Architecture Şefik Birkiye.
The building poses special technical challenges at such a height: The construction had to be earthquake-proof.
A special solution also had to be found because the façade was to have natural stone cladding to convey elegance and stability. The problem here was the weight of the stone at great heights, and the solution came from the Turkish company SilkarStone.
In keeping with the anniversary of the Republic, the company was able to demonstrate that it has joined the top league of natural stone companies worldwide.
It supplied 26,000 m² of its Laminated Stone Panels (LSP). These are large panels of just 5 mm thin stone on a 20 mm thin aluminum honeycomb structure.
In addition to the total square meters, there are 400 m² of curved façade panels. Their production requires special expertise in handling the stone.
The stone used was limestone. In the combination of 20 mm thin aluminum plus 5 mm thin stone the weight is 19 kg/m². The panels were manufactured at SilkarStone’s factory at Bilecik. It takes 3 hours by truck from there to the construction site in Istanbul.
As usual, each individual façade element was checked by inspectors before delivery from the factory. This was preceded by tests on building mockups by the US company Turner Façade Consultants.
SilkarStone has already installed its Laminated Stone Panels in numerous buildings in Turkey and abroad, for example in an overhanging roof structure (soffit application) at the Atatürk Cultural Center in Istanbul and at the Istanbul headquarters of the Capital Markets Board of Turkey.
SilkarStone Chairman Erdogan Akbulak says with: “We completed our job in ten months.“
The Central Bank will manage its new tower itself and use 24 floors of it. The base floors host a conference hall, museum, library, restaurant, sports fields and winter gardens. The tower floors are dedicated to office space and meeting areas.
The basement floors extend seven storeys down from the ground floor. The Central Bank’s safe will also be housed there. The money printing works will remain elsewhere.
İstanbul Financial Center (IFC)
Photos/Renderings: TCMB
