Büyük Ankara Oteli

The tall block with a many-angled mass standing directly opposite the parliament in Bakanlıklar was designed in 1960 by the Swiss architect Marc Joseph Saugey with Yüksel Okan as a Pension Fund investment and built between 1960 and 1966. With 22 floors and three basements it rises 67.66 metres and had 194 rooms; from its opening in 1966 until 1986 it was Ankara's only five-star hotel. Wikipedia counts it among the most important examples of 1960s Turkish architecture and the country's main works of organic modernism; aluminium sun-breakers gave the original facade its character. It was privatised in 2005, and a renovation that replaced the sun-breakers with a blue metal facade drew objections from professional bodies; it reopened as a hotel in 2009. Seen from outside.