Melike Altinisik & Camlica TV and Radio Tower

Camlica Tower is a 369 meter telecommunications and observation tower in Istanbul, designed by Melike Altinisik Architects. Completed in 2020 and inaugurated in May 2021, it replaced dozens of scattered broadcast masts on Camlica Hill and now stands as the tallest structure in the city.

Architecture offices design many projects across a career, yet most are remembered for a single building that captures public attention. For Melike Altinisik and her Istanbul practice, that building is the Camlica TV and Radio Tower. The project reshaped the silhouette of the Anatolian side of the city and put a Turkish woman architect at the centre of a national conversation about form, technology, and identity. To understand why it matters, it helps to start with the architect behind it.

Who Is Melike Altinisik?

Melike Altinisik is an award-winning architect, designer, and educator whose work connects design technology with a fluid, organic approach to form. Since 2006 she has built international experience across high-rise buildings, masterplans, cultural centres, museums, and furniture design. Her studio operates from offices in Istanbul and Seoul, working at very different scales at the same time.

Her academic background sits behind that range. She earned a Master of Architecture and Urbanism from the Architectural Association Design Research Laboratory (AADRL) in London in 2006, after completing a Bachelor of Architecture with High Honours at Istanbul Technical University (ITU) in 2003. Her studio work has collected several design awards, including Europe 40 under 40, the FEIDAD Design Award, and a Swiss Art Award. She has taken part in many national and international architectural competitions, exhibitions, and publications.

From Zaha Hadid Architects to Her Own Practice

Before founding her own firm, Altinisik spent seven years in London as a lead architect with Zaha Hadid Architects, from 2006 to 2013. That period shaped her fluency with complex geometry and computational tools, an influence you can still trace in recent ZHA work such as the Songshan Lake Cultural Center. She carried those methods back to Istanbul and applied them to local conditions, which places her among the leading voices of parametric architecture in Turkey. She has also served as a guest critic and lecturer at institutions including the AA in London, the Staedelschule in Frankfurt, the Lebanese American University in Beirut, ITU, and Bilgi University.

What Makes Camlica Tower Stand Out?

TV and radio towers have long served as markers of civic ambition, from Seattle and Berlin to Tokyo and Guangzhou. Camlica Tower joins that group, but it does more than broadcast a signal. The design reads as a single sculptural body whose silhouette shifts depending on where you stand around the city. Viewed from the historic peninsula it looks slender and upright, while from the Bosphorus it appears to twist and lean.

The form takes cues from the tulip, a flower with deep cultural weight in Turkish and Ottoman history. That reference gives the engineering a recognisable identity instead of leaving it as a bare mast. The practical goal was just as direct: clear Camlica Hill of the cluster of irregular antennas that had built up over decades and bring them into one ordered structure.

Inside the Tower: Design and Visitor Experience

The visitor program is layered through the height of the building. The design includes restaurants, exhibition spaces, meeting areas, a panoramic elevator, and a two-story observation deck that looks out over the Bosphorus Strait. At the base, a public foyer, cafe, and exhibition areas sit inside a podium that connects to the existing park walkway in the Kucuk Camlica Grove, so the ground level stays open to the surrounding green space.

Two panorama elevators rise on either side of the body, reading as elements that both feed and split the otherwise monolithic shaft. Visitors travel vertically along roughly 180 meters of the structure, facing the historic peninsula on one side and the Black Sea coast on the other. The observation and restaurant floors sit about 400 meters above sea level, which gives one of the widest public views available anywhere in the city.

Engineering a 369 Meter Landmark

The tower’s height comes from two stacked systems. A 203 meter concrete core carries the main loads, and a 145 meter steel mast continues above it to reach the full 369 meters. Standing on Kucuk Camlica Hill, the structure rises to about 587 meters above sea level, which makes it the tallest structure in Istanbul. Combining a heavy concrete shaft with a tuned steel mast is a common strategy for broadcast towers because it balances stiffness lower down with the lighter, signal-friendly section near the top.

Coordinating a structure like this meant aligning architecture, structural engineering, and construction sequencing from the start. The team worked through advanced engineering methods so that material choices and floor planning supported both the broadcast function and public access. For a closer look at how those disciplines depend on each other, see our piece on the link between design and construction.

Why Camlica Tower Matters for Istanbul

A single building rarely defines a skyline, but a tower of this height does exactly that. Camlica Tower gives the Anatolian side a clear vertical marker and consolidates broadcast infrastructure that was previously spread across the hilltop. It also signals the technical ambition of a city that already carries centuries of architectural history, from the domes documented in our look at Hagia Sophia and sacred geometry to contemporary parametric work.

The competition origin matters here too. A project that began with three collaborators sketching ideas for a national contest ended as a state-built landmark, which shows how open competitions can still shape major public architecture in Turkey. For Altinisik, it turned years of computational design study into a permanent fixture on the horizon.

Looking Ahead

Camlica Tower has moved from a construction site to a working part of Istanbul’s daily life, drawing visitors to its observation decks while quietly handling the city’s broadcast signals. Its design shows how a piece of pure infrastructure can carry cultural meaning when the form is given real attention. You can read the full project documentation, including drawings and photography, on ArchDaily and the technical record on Wikipedia.

Bottom Line: Camlica Tower stands as the clearest statement so far from Melike Altinisik Architects, joining engineering at extreme height with a tulip-inspired form that reads differently from every part of Istanbul. It proves that broadcast infrastructure can also serve as public space and civic identity.