By the straits between the European and the Asian continent, in 1938, the architect Bruno Taut built a house in Istanbul for himself he probably did not see completed, since he suddenly died in December of that year. The building, located in Istanbul-Ortaköy by the Bosporus, is a single-storey house over a rectangular ground plan. It sits on a concrete slab measuring 6 by 15 m and only very partially standing on solid ground. The building is closely linked to the exile history of its creator, who, escaping from National Socialist Germany, came to Istanbul in late 1936 by way of his interim exile in Japan and began planning his house only shortly thereafter. The essay brings Taut’s house in dialogue with the history of the city of Istanbul as a refuge or place of migration. The principal question for the paper is how an architect who had to leave his homeland and Western Europe builds a house for his personal use.