architectural project at the SÜLEYMANİYE district

With the winds of globalisation, the social, cultural and economic dynamics of Istanbul have been drastically changed, and in the last 25 years, an uncontrolled urban growth without a master plan has characterised the ‘urban collage’ in the ‘fragmented city’. With the accelerating internal and international migration, emerging contradictions have been spatialised in globalising Istanbul, in the 8,000-year-old traditional centre, in particular. In this context, the exceptional ‘centrality’ of the 8,000-year-old cultural and social accumulation (including the multi-faith, multi-religious aspects of the past as well as the contemporary heteregenoity) of the former imperial city paves way to discussions of the architectural design studio: In this regard, the Süleymaniye / Vefa district, the northern part the historical peninsula (the southern sea-front of the Golden Horn) has been taken as a ‘stage’ visualising the changing urban conditions, and their emerging potentials of the globalising city. The Süleymaniye / Vefa district is going to be a ‘milieu’ to set up an architectural discussion platform in the studio for the confrontation and/or togetherness of the global / the local. In this framework, in the third year of your architectural journey, the studio explores the urban condition in the city of the third millenium, unveiling the emerging cultural, social and economic aspects.

The studio initially questions the Vefa district both as a ‘centre’ as well as a ‘periphery’: whose neighbourhood is this? In this regard, we aim at discussing the emerging centrality and/or the peripheral conditions … (the new idea of the periphery is the idea of bridging boundaries, contextualisation in its all forms…)

To what extent the Vefa district is the centre and/or extention of the city? To be more specific, the relation of the historical master pieces as well as the modern ones (IMC by Doğan Tekeli, Sami Sisa, Metin Hepgüler) with the void, re-defining the geographical configuration / geographical potentials, the aspects of the urban daily life are going to be the initial streamlines…
You are asked to develop a ‘building’ as a tactical response to the urban strategy of the local authority. Within the fragmented urban chaos of the city and the district, during the initial process, you are expected to produce urban collage(s) and develop a new urban strategy for the area through the urban section… You are expected, in particular, to develop an urban and architectural scenario for a sustainable continuity of the built environment; then to focus on a specific ‘void’ of your choice within your urban scenario.