Haliç Coast Urban Design Competiton
Golden Horn’s future is actually buried in its past, its memory. With the intervention we substantially make, we want to dig its memory and ‘remake’ it. We approach to repair as not merely freezing the existing but understanding its identity, making its layers visible and building the future with this knowledge.
Our knowledge about memory is usually about what is close to us temporally and spiritually. In the case of Golden Horn, shore is a nostalgic feature in Byzantine and Ottoman Periods mostly 19th and 20th century. Though Golden Horn is more than that, geologically and biologically. A basin with a special biosystem that has preserved its characteristics until recently.
Very simply, the archaeological feature of the cultural layers of the Golden Horn, which today consists of sparse and singular historical buildings in a flat coastal park, has the potential to be a visible part of the restoration of cultural heritage. With this, there is a multi-layered legacy that has been physically destroyed, recorded in the memories of documents, photographs and people. We built our design strategy in order to reveal these. It is about creating urban archaeological landscape areas by descending to the original levels of the buildings and reviving the vanished traces by functionalizing them.
Social Restoration
Social features such as traditional life, neighborhood culture, production styles and products, inner neighborhoods-coastal area relations, and opposite shore relations
can be restored with the same method. The social build of the project is construction of a future where the participant feels that they belong to the ‘place’, produces with
the knowledge of the place, and designs the future together.
Ecological Restoration
Today, polluted and still being polluted sea, endangered aquatic life and shrunken habitats for migratory birds, unsustainable ‘green’ spaces can be revived and made sustainable by restoring the ecological memory of the place.
Restoration of the Memory
For a land to be a ‘place’, it must go through certain processes; enriches with the accumulation of layers by increasing, fading, multiplying, destroying, sifting. Although this memory, which consists of layers, is not completely visible/known, it continues to live in the spirit of the place, free from time and space. The visibility of memory can be revived, evolved, repaired or completely destroyed.
Golden Horn, which has experienced the process of becoming a place through very dense layers and the space of its identity has increased, has lost most of its memory after industrialization and especially since the 1980s. In parallel with the socio-economic developments in the world and in Turkey, the identity of the place has also changed.
The memory that creates the identity of the place consists of various layers. Billions of years of natural history, thousands of years of human history, tangible and intangible cultural heritage, and their relationship to space and social life form these layers. Everything that exists today and that we are doing is largely a continuation of these layers.
The future of the Golden Horn is actually recorded in its past, in its memory. With our intervention, we want to dig up and repair this memory to a large extent. We understand the repair as not just freezing the existing and completing the “deficiencies”, but understanding its identity, making its layers visible and building the future with this knowledge.
Awards
- 3rd Prize
Info
Location: Eyüp – Fatih, İstanbul, Türkiye
Client: İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality
Team: Yusuf Burak Dolu, Fatma Sezgin, Pelin Yıldız, Simge Çil, Beyza Emir, Firdevs Ermiş Ünal, Sıla Bozdeveci, Serkan Ateş, Koray Bayraktutan, Ozan Çalışkan, Büşra Aydemir, Zeynep Demireli, Pınar Kaynak, Ahmet Başbunar, Oğuzhan Çokgünlü, Aykut Çor, Ezgi Sezgin, Zahide Sezgin, Ümran Dolu
Consultants: Hayriye Eşbah Tuncay, S. Yıldız Salman, Mert Güler,
Project Date: 2020
Indoor Area (m²): 500
Land Area (m²): 420.000
Type: Kentsel Tasarım, Yarışma
Program: Public Space, Sports Center, Culture-Art, Center, Social Center, Commerce, Transportation Structures
Scope: Concept Project
Galery
Project Location
KOOP Architects
Şahkulu Mahallesi,
Kumbaracı Yokuşu, No:57, D:5,
Beyoğlu / İstanbul / Türkiye