The Austrian architect Clemens Holzmeister was invited in 1927 by the Turkish government to work on the building up of Ankara as the new capital city of Turkey. Holzmeister designed several ministry buildings and was also commissioned to design the Atatürk palace, the residence of president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in Ankara. This commission led to Holzmeister receiving numerous commissions for private villas (Nicolai 1998, 64f.). Between 1932 and 1946 Holzmeister designed more than a dozen houses for the country’s politicians, military men and aristocracy. However, only some of the designs were actually implemented, and few of the projects were as radical as the functional and modern architecture of the Atatürk palace. As a result, when, in many of these villa designs, Holzmeister formulates a classic tiled roof, bay windows and stone base, the picture that emerges is of a residence that has been cautiously modernised. An example of this is the Eckert-Rifki Villa in Baltalimanı, situated on the shores of the Bosporus. While many clients chose Europeanised floor plans, the exterior architecture was required to follow traditional models. Particularly in the 1940s there was a striking departure from the radical modernity of functionalist designs in the wake of rising nationalism in architecture. This also indicated that a reformed lifestyle did not inevitably have to lead to the adoption of European forms of architecture.
It is not clear whether the Eckert-Rifki Villa still exists, or has been considerably remodelled or demolished.