istanbulmetro . istanbul architecture design

Istanbul nominated Best City in Wallpaper* Design Awards, REX Architecture designs Vakko headquarters, Mike Berg sculpture

Wallpaper* Design Awards 2010

Web  videos on Istanbul in Moncole and Wallpaper, Istanbul nominated as Best City by Wallpaper
The two bastion’s of international in-the-know cool, Monocle and Wallpaper were working the Istanbul theme this week with web videos. Monocle focuses on Arab tourists attracted to Istanbul by popular Turkish soap-opera NOOR, a flop in Turkey but a craze amongst middle and upper class Arab women lured by the rags to riches storyline, Istanbul scenery and the blue eyes of heart throb Kivanç Tatlıtuğ.  Wallpaper* magazine video features the less sexy but still hip Autoban design duo of Seyhan Özdemir and Sefer Cağlar as they expostulate the same old yada yada on east/west, old/new, chaos/order themes in a neat production centered largely in the Beyoğlu area. The City video was a part of Istanbul’s nomination as Best City in the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2010 (which was eventually won by New York).

http://www.monocle.com/sections/culture/Web-Articles/Soap-Opera-Tourists/

http://www.wallpaper.com/video/travel/city-short-istanbul/61718743001

http://www.wallpaper.com/designawards/2010/istanbul

REX Architecture, New York, completes Vakko and Power Media headquarters in Altunizade, Istanbul, January 2010

REX Architects of New York finish Vakko headquarters in Altunizade
REX Architects of New York (ex-Rem Koolhaas, OMA staffers) have finally after a long and arduous process about to complete construction of the Vakko headquarters in the Altunizade district of Istanbul. Vakko, a venerable textile brand led by the Hakko family, reached out to the New York firm to give them a brave new world look for Vakko and the Power Media group. Working with the existing half-built foundations of a hotel project,  the REXers led by front man Joshua Prince-Ramus transformed the concrete box using a plan they had originally design for an office building for Caltech University in California. REX’s design, a glass base surrounded by a jumbled grouping of steel boxes in the interior, presents a dynamic face to a company known more for it’s traditional textile designs.  After London’s Foreign Office Architects Meydan Shoppinging Center REX’s Vakko building becomes one of the few meaningful examples of international architects working in Turkey’s insular building culture. Thanks to REX’s effort and Vakko for the vision, Istanbul has a contemporary piece of architecture worth talking about.

http://www.rex-ny.com/work/vakko-fashion-center/

Mike Berg exhibition, "Heavy Metal", Galeri Nev, Istanbul, January 2010

Mike Berg, Heavy Metal art exhibition opens at Galeri Nev
American artist Mike Berg has been living in Istanbul for almost a decade.  His work concentrating on pattern, abstraction and gesture has seen this native of Washington state delve into the details of eastern and Islamic based geometric abstraction and handicraft. In his latest show HEAVY METAL at Galeri Nev in the Misir Apt in Beyoğlu, Berg shows large rusted steel sculptures and wall hangings that explore the tension between the ephemerality of momentary gestures of the hand and the solidity of the material.  The introspective Berg has long been obsessed with the ma thematic systems in the patterns of the architecture and decorative arts of Islamic cultures.  This can be seen in the apocalypticaly named wall paintings made from chalk lines, From Barbarism, To Decadence, Culture, which surround the viewer in a captivating abstraction that is Berg’s systematic reworking of eastern thought.
Mike Berg, HEAVY METAL, Galeri Nev, through February 6, 2010. Misir Apt., Istiklal Caddesi, Beyoğlu

http://www.galerinevistanbul.com/

Add comment January 18th, 2010

Istanbul Urban Age conference /Architecture and Urbanism Days, Garanti Galeri / Arkitera

Next week finds Istanbul as a subject of a major urbanism conference organized by Urban Age.   According to their web site, Urban Age is a six-year sequence of international conferences held in cities across Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe between 2005 and 2010 funded by the London School of Economics and the Alfred Herrhausen Society of Deutsche Bank.  You can find the conference program here.

Also Garanti Galeri and Arkitera are co-organizing something called Architecture and Urbanism Days. The conference program can be downloaded here. The high point for me will be the release of Garanti Galeri’s Mapping Istanbul book edited by Pelin Derviş and Meriç Öner.  Also some panels  on architecture and urbanism in Istanbul.

Although I am not an urbanist, the connection of urbanism to architecture does give me some perspective on this issue.  Here are my top 10 aspects of Istanbul urbanism that need to be addressed:

1.  There is no professional group concerned about the design of public spaces in Istanbul and Turkey.   Architects are concerned about their building’s profile, urban planners about the legitimacy of the master plan, landscape architects largely don’t exist.  Who claims urban space and urban design then? Who is responsible for creating “place”?   Take a walk in the Maslak district to understand this.

2.  Istanbul urbanism is driven in important part by informal Anatolian town development dynamics with emphasis on extended family relationships.   Planning of new residential zones does not seem to take this account.

3.  Most buildings in Istanbul are constructed using steel reinforced concrete.  As the dominant construction material of Turkey, reinforced concrete buildings dominate the city.   There will be no major transformation of the city’s urbanism until alternative building systems are made available.

4.  Corruption determines building patterns.   Networks of commercial associations creates the means of construction. Land and building opportunities are speculative enterprises organized in deals behind closed doors.

5. Existing building stock stinks. 95% of the buildings in Istanbul are terrible examples of architecture.   Until these buildings are removed the city’s urbanism is not going to change in a meaningful way.

6. Contemporary architecture in Turkey has no value system.  How do you improve urbanism in Istanbul if most of the architects are rehashing tired modernist design principals? Architecture in Turkey needs to stand for something beyond client’s needs, the architects design sthick or a developer’s marketing strategy.

7.  The concept of  “public” slowly developing, to slowly.   Western based ideas of civic public and public space have only been developed in the past 60/70 years in Istanbul.   The creation of public spaces is a minor aspect of urban growth which is largely driven by commercial public projects such as shopping centers, office buildings and residential complexes. Where are the public spaces that could be the engines of civic culture, the parks, plazas,  public libraries, museums, athletic facilities,  etc.

8.  Urban design planning principals do not exist.  The visage of the city is blighted by a hodge-podge of half-finished, poorly maintained buildings adorned with  nasty signage and dubious decoration.  These outlandish scenes can be seen in high income as well low income areas.  Go stand in front of the Akmerkez Shopping Center for an example.

9. There was a good stretch of decent architecture in Istanbul in the 1950s and 1960s that is under threat.   Quality buildings from this period such as the Istanbul Hilton, the I.M.Ç.,  AKM are for some reason not regarded as historically or architecturally important by the powers that be.  The result being that all these buildings are currently under threat of destruction. The first waves of modernism in  Istanbul need to respected as disciplined and thought-out examples of modernism.  The concept of the ” historic past “in Istanbul needs to incorporate the developments of the 20th century.

10.   The image of the city is static.  The identity of the city is too dependent on historic models (the silhouette of mosques and minarets for example). An integrative forward thinking concept of Istanbul urbanism needs to be identified.

4 comments October 30th, 2009

Miniatürk - a short review

This is a short review of the Miniatürk theme park that I wrote for ID Magazine back in January of 2005. This is my original text that was later shortened by the editors at ID. I thought it was still relevant so I republish it here. The miniature city model park dates back to the early 1950s in Holland with the most famous being the 1:25 scale Madurodam.

General view of Miniatürk, Sütlüce, İstanbul

“It used to be that Americans would go to Epcot Center in Orlando, The Disney Corporation’s theme park for all things worldly to get a quick taste of global culture. Eliminating the muss and fuss of international travel, Epcot’s various country pavilions, modeled in a quirky 90% of normal scale would give visitors a peak at a bite size cliché version of each country’s cuisine, products and architecture. All this complete with real live nationals in traditional gear providing smiley-faced service. Much to the consternation of high-minded critics like Jean Baudrillard who grandly proclaimed the modern theme park as the end of the real as we know it, the theme park and theme park style architecture have been a dominant force in urban life for over two decades. Anyone who’s recently had a chance to visit New York City’s 42nd Street or the lofty cutting-edge-architecture-as-attraction collection of buildings of Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz can attest to that.

The thematization of our cities has reached a point where individual cities and even countries have themed themselves to gain the bounty of tourism dollars. One of the newest of these is the resourcefully named Miniaturk in Istanbul, Turkey. Run by the Municipality of Greater Istanbul, Miniaturk is just that, a theme park containing miniaturized versions of Turkey’s and the former Ottoman Empire’s most famous historical sites in over 100, 1/25 scale models.

Located in the upper Golden Horn, a dusty length of waterway in the industrial center of this frenzied city, Miniaturk’s architectural models arranged in neat pathways around a larger scale version of the city’s Bosphorus Bridge allow sightseers to quickly scan over 2000 years of architecture in about an hour. For visitors to Turkey with not enough time to inspect the country’s superior but far-flung examples of Greek , Roman, Byzantine, Near Eastern and Ottoman architecture, Miniaturk provides a brief glimpse into what you are missing without actually having to miss it. As with the real thing, the great domed mosques of the Ottoman master architect Sinan and the Byzantine Church of Hagia Sophia stand out in a mix of buildings that deteriorates in the modern period into scale model examples of a gas station, a shopping mall and that consummate monument of modern culture, a model of a stretch of modern highway! So successful has Miniaturk been in selling architecture as entertainment that a second example, Minicity, designed by the innovative Turkish architect Emre Arolat has already been built in the Mediterranean coastal city of Antalya, and is set to open later this year.”

Model of Hidiv Kasrı (House of the Khedive of Egypt), Miniatürk, Istanbul

Model of Hagia Sophia, Miniatürk, Istanbul

Model of Süleymaniye Mosque, Miniatürk, Istanbul

Model train, Miniatürk, Istanbul

1 comment May 27th, 2008

Galata revival…finally, real estate developer NOA walks the walk

NOA’s residential projects in the Galata Tower area

For about 20 years now the area around the Galata tower has been the focus of constant real estate speculation. It has been talked about endlessly as the first big thing in downtown Istanbul’s eventual gentrification. The new Soho, the new Marais, yuppies, wine bars, cafes, urban hipsters etc. etc. the future for the neighborhood that was once home to Istanbul’s Christian community was all but a done deal.

20 years on the area seems to finally be living up to the hype. While up the street in Tünel and Asmalımescit cafe society is booming, down around the tower we will soon soon the completion of a number of residential buildings that is set to make the Galata district Istanbul’s second bourgeois bohemia enclave (after Cihangir). And the credit has to go to the company that is doing the most to realize this effort, the property developers NOA led by the young, dynamic Sarp Tiryakioğlu. You can check out the NOA projects, 3 residential properties of rental apartments on their web site. These are primarily refurbishments of nearly 100 year old buildings with the only contemporary architecture here being the renovation of ALI HOCA 6 building by the architect Elif Özdemir.

I had a chance to visit the as yet to be completed Ali Hoca 6 a couple of weeks back and was impressed by the simple and straightforward design by Özdemir who seems to be expert at doing a lot with a little. Despite a fairly limited budget her direct use of industrial materials against the cleaned up skeleton of the old building creates a agreeable harmony between old and new that brings a contemporary flair to this ancient neighborhood. Both NOA’s Tiryarkioğlu and Özdemir have to be given credit for the detailed and difficult work that will undoubtedly be a benchmark in Galata’s property sector.

Add comment May 13th, 2008

Zaha Hadid project in Kartal, Istanbul, an update

Zaha Hadid master plan for Kartal, Istanbul, stone quarry area around E5 highway

In an era of massive change in urban centers, Istanbul is set to make its mark as a major world city with a signature project for the 21st century. The Kartal, Zaha Hadid project, or as it is officially known, the Kartal Industrial Area Central Business District Plan (Kartal Sanayi Bölgesi Merkezi İş Alanları Planlaması) is the city’s most ambitious building project undertaken in recent memory. If it is built according to Hadid’s master plan, the 555 hectare site stretching from the Sea of Marmara up to the stone quarries of the E5 highway will be an important business district and center for tourism and leisure. Furthermore, the project’s focus on business and tourism activity will make it an important alternative business district to Istanbul’s current Central Business District in the Levent-Mazlak zone as the city attempts to make a mark on the global stage. Hadid’s design, an ambitious architectural vocabulary of flowing forms and undulating lines in steel, glass and concrete never seen before in the country, promises to be a bold statement in futurism for a city dominated for so long by it’s history.

Zaha Hadid master plan for Kartal, Istanbul, Kartal coast line and new marina
Hadid unveils new project images
An important step in this project’s development took place on Feburary 21, 2008, in a press conference at the city government bureau that originated this effort, the Istanbul Greater Municipality, Metropolitan Planning and Urban Design Centre, (İstanbul Metropoliten Planlama ve Kentsel Tasarım Merkezi). At the conference attended by Hadid, Mayor Kadir Topbas, Kartal Mayor Arif Dağlar, İMP Director Prof. Dr. İbrahim Baz and architectural consultant Süha Özkan details were announced for the Kartal project as it moved from vision to reality. In what will be Istanbul’s most important building project since ex-Mayor Bedrettin Dalan’s infrastructural road works of the 1980s, new project drawings and computer images were unveiled that show a vast cityscape of Hadid’s slipstream forms in a mix of tower and courtyard building types. This project which dates back to an invited competition in 2005 that included other top tier architects such as Kisho Kurokawa, Massimiliano Fuksas, was won by Zaha Hadid in 2006 . The consortium of stakeholders in the project, a mix of local government, landowners, a planning commission and an architect of an international stature such as Hadid was a first for Istanbul and Turkey. While in the last two years the project had been stuck in limbo as the landowners negotiated with each other and the Kartal and Istanbul Buyuksehir Belediye, the recent press conference was a clear sign that this project will be moving forward to construction pegged for 2009.

What we see now in these new drawings is that Zaha Hadid Architect’s design has been gone through increased levels of detailing since it was first voted winner of the invited competition back in 2006. The designs for the initial winning proposal showed a sleek landscape of buildings that mimicked Istanbul’s undulating topography. These buildings were a mix of a few dominant types – towers that resembled stretched tree trunks, lozenge shaped square buildings some with courtyards and flat pointy attenuated diamond shape structures stretching out in the sea. The plan coordinated the shapes of the buildings into a wavy, undulating landscape that fluidly connected each building. The concept was to calibrate the fluidity of Istanbul’s dynamic urbanism with its counterpoint in Hadid’s dynamic architectural geometry. The plan amounted to a web or net of buildings weaving together the existing older fabric with the new. Areas of density with clumps of towers were mixed with low rise buildings to form this man-made hilly architopography. The design and size, over 6,000,000m2 construction area, combined to make this undertaking one of the most radical effort taken in Istanbul architecture and planning since the golden age of Ottoman architecture in the 16th century.

Zaha Hadid with Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş during February 2008 press conference

The Municipalities polycentric urban design strategy
While the project was rolled out with a major publicity campaign, in the interim between 2006 there was little news about the development of the project beyond Hadid’s and Mayor Topbas’ occasional public announcements that the landowners had been negotiating the details of the plan. The participation of the private sector was in fact an important element of Kartal differentiating it from other large public works projects in Turkey currently. The regeneration scheme was a joint public and private sector initiative providing it, in the minds of many, half a chance of being built as initially proposed in Hadid’s visionary design.

The program was driven from the Municipalities desire to create an alternative to the European side influence on the city in the “bedroom communities” of the Asian side. As such it called for a mix of public and private activities including the center piece central business district in addition to high-end residential development, cultural facilities such as concert halls, museums, and theatres, and leisure programs including a marina and tourist hotels. The press conference in February provided more detail and showed the plan had advanced from concept towards preparations for construction. Hadid’s plan was an ambition one, largely based on the IMP’s and Mayor Topbas’ desire to create multiple city centers for economic benefit and transportation/logistical efficiency. The master plan’s main strategies according to Hadid are:

• to balance Istanbul: helping the city to become polycentric (as an antidote to the current mono-centric bias of the European side.)
• to generate an economic impetus: creating a ripple effect of wealth into the areas adjacent to the master plan.
• to create new vibrant, urban city quarters where approximately 100 000 people can live and work, supported by integrated public transport

Radical architecture for an old city
At the press conference new renders created by Zaha Hadid Architects showed the project at a more advanced stage of design. The architectural language of undulating waves and net-like forms in the initial concept had now been adapted more convincingly to the urban context. Instead of the large monolithic blocks of the concept, the new renders show a more nuanced language dominated by the large tree trunk towers and the lozenge shaped perimeter blocks buildings lining the axes of the main blocks of the plan. Criticism of the initial concept’s overtly monolithic scale and lack of street level planning that could synthesize more convincingly with Istanbul’s famous street activity was now settled with this design. At street level in this updated scheme, spaces flowed into other spaces in a dynamic fluid way throughout the plan. The architecture of the orthogonal and square which was and is the dominant language of Turkish architecture was in Hadid’s design replaced by an architecture of the curve and vector. Not since the days of Mimar Sinan had Istanbul seen an architecture that combined mathematical and formal precision in such a convincing way. Seemingly Hadid’s dynamic architecture had more in common with the premodern classical Ottoman period than the watered down modernist, 20th century architecture that had been employed in Istanbul’s architecture for such a long time.

The importance of Hadid’s Kartal plan architecturally could now also be clearly seen. Istanbul long suffering from a lack of a distinct contemporary urban design language and character has now been given with these latest images from the Kartal project a new forward looking vision. This vision, an architecture of dynamic, sweeping forms in glass and steel with great lateral and vertical power has to considered one of the first original takes on what contemporary architecture in Istanbul and Turkey could be as the city tries to become capital of the Eurasian region. The long standing domination of the anonymous, informal architectures of the squatter areas and urban sprawl of the last 30 years could now finally be reconfigured by a bold statement in architectural form. In the context of modern architecture and real estate in Istanbul, the worn out 20th century modernist architectures still employed by the vast majority of Turkish architects was now given an alternative in Hadid’s design. Both the existing formal and informal architecture of Istanbul, the hegemonic combination in the urban fabric of anonymous apartment buildings and unpleasant modernist blocks, could seemingly after many years give way to a vision for a new Istanbul of dynamic, attenuated, lively forms.

Hadid’s design will undoubtedly grow and develop through more detailed work in her own office and with the inclusion of many other architects responsible for each building’s design. If the over-taxed Hadid can keep creative focus on this project, we expect more details of this convincing design where more interesting formal and architectonic conditions of equal innovative force will be revealed. In light of the failure of the last 30 years to create a bold design for such an important city as Istanbul it seems miraculous that Hadid’s team comprised of young architects including a few Turkish architects (Sevil Yazici, Saffet Bekiroglu) has gotten this far at all in their design work.

Zaha Hadid master plan for Kartal, Istanbul, aerial view of Kartal and project area


Current view of Kartal, Istanbul 2008

o A gridded network of streets with 3 major clusters of density, allowing for a dynamic skyline that takes advantage of the coastal disposition, sea views and controlling vistas.
o A new main Boulevard to be the primary artery - the “spine” of the entire masterplan – providing connectivity between the new metro station in the North and the rail and motorway transport hub in the South - with a new over ground light railway/tram.
o Two main Central Business Districts: one in the North and one in the South of the masterplan.
o A polarity of major focal points with large public and recreational areas:
The North: the quarry becomes a major open recreational area - landscaped and centred around the lake.
The South: the marina and recreational areas near the seafront are developed in conjunction with the Cultural District.

2 comments May 13th, 2008

Emerging hyperarchaic design from Istanbul, “Fibrous Room: Evolving Structural Logic”

Architecture in Turkey today is largely a matter of concrete and cement. Steel reinforced concrete formed largely by hand in rectilinear shapes, this is how we create our buildings. Contemporary architecture in Turkey consists of large boxes full of smaller boxes of concrete with no curve or acute angle that could provide difficulty in construction or cost. This has been case in our building culture since the 1940s and does not seem set to change anytime soon.

The reason for steel reinforced concrete construction is clear. Compared to steel and wood construction it is relatively inexpensive and does not require highly skilled labor to produce.  Having been for some many years the primary way of building in Turkey has meant that the whole building culture from architect to engineer, contractor to construction worker and public officials charged with regulating building understand the basic details of this  simple building technology as the lingua franca of construction in Turkey.

The hegemony of reinforced concrete structures has had some peculiar affects on our architecture.  For many years, architects influenced directly and subconsciously by it have resorted to what we can call for lack of better word, lego architecture, an architecture of square and rectangle blocks piled up to create a wide variety of orthogonally shaped concrete structures. In the 1980s and 90s, some of our leading architects, Nevzat Sayın, Emre Arolat, Han Tümertekin and Can Çinicı took this type of square building to its limits to create a highly simplified almost archaic sense of abstract and geometric contemporaneity from square geometric architecture not seen anywhere else in the world. Recently others most notably the architect/decorator Eren Talu have farcically limited their forms to just squares developing a signature style that has been crudely understood under the cliché term of minimalist design. Even worse has been the emergence of a kitsch neo-classicism of boxy building with facades with applied classical architectural decoration.

It would be fair to say that not since Mimar Sinan’s great dome structures of the 17^th century  has our architecture produced anything meaningful that wasn’t based on a 90 degree angle and that wasn’t made with concrete.  Architectonic expression and material experimentation, the great themes of 20^th century architecture have eluded our architects to a great extent.

It is in this context that it was almost miraculous to see the current exhibition at the GG gallery in Beyoglu focusing specifically on the themes of experimentation in concrete and form in an exhibit entitled, “Fibrous Room: Evolving Structural Logic” (Strüktürel Mantığı Araştırmak: Lifli Oda) organized by the architects Claudia Pasquero, Marco Poletto and Nilufer Kozikoğlu that will be on display to March 8. The exhibition by these three graduates of the Architectural Association in London are the result of  research efforts by teams from the AA and School of Architecture at the Istanbul Technical University. Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto are founders of ecoLogicStudio in London. Graduates of EE (Environment and Energy) MA in Architectural Association (AA) and are currently running AA INTER10Unit. Nilüfer Kozikoğlu has graduated from the DRL (Design Research Laboratory) at the AA, and currently runs her studio in Istanbul.

The exhibition at GG is the end result of this group’s efforts to extrapolate form in the union of concrete and 3D computer investigations into structure especially the current global interest in digital parametric architecture. Or in the words of the organizers, “ “Fibrous Structures” is an investigation into the emergent properties of complex cementitious structures when parametrically defined and modelled through a weaving organizational logic.”    Or to put it simply, this exhibition shows how interesting forms can be created by simply injecting a mix of cement and fiberglass into a clump of large interwoven hoses and allowing them to dry. Over the three months of the exhibition at GG these hoses filled with concrete cand drawn through a complex steel frame in a weave pattern derived parametric design software.  The hoses hung crudely  on loops with strings  (this is the weakest part of the architects design and seems like it should it been solved more elegantly) will eventually be removed to reveal the dynamic weaved concrete and fibre structure of hoses.

The importance of this exhibition is this new form, this weave of concrete, both structurally and aesthetic expressive, suggesting a new type of 21^st century architecture originating out of Istanbul broken out of the concrete box that has long inhibited design in Turkey.  In the Turkish architectural perspective, the groups working methodology integrating the newest digital parametric computing technologies with premodern practices such as basket weaving and the mathematically based abstract geometric principals of Islamic and nomad art is an extremely important investigation into the possibilities of local practice merged with universal technique. As such, this union of the very new and the very old represents the emergence of a new type of architecture and design principal that I have been calling hyperarchaic. (Other examples include the work of the Barbarian independent design group, Xurban.net collective and Norman Foster and Tabanlioglu Mimarlik’s hyperarchaic monumental pyramid in Astana, Kazakhstan ) This approach creating new forms and efficiencies suggests and reaffirms the importance of the geography of Istanbul, fusing eastern and western knowledge and modern and premodern ways of doing things into a new episteme. It is my assertion, however grand, that the hyperarchaism in the creation of architecture and design by mathematical and critical processes and not by metaphor seen in the example provided  by Kozikoglu, Pasquero and Poletto has not been created here in a formal way since the days of Sinan.  Overall the design process through the investigations at both the AA and ITU by these innovative thinkers is the first time in a long time these basic issues of concrete, digital architecture and mathematics have brought together in such a “concrete” way. It is shocking that it has taken our design culture so permeated by concrete buildings this long to create this kind of innovation in architectural that is a statement about the possibilities of building in cementitious materials.  Thanks go to the design team and students, the sponsors - the engineering firm of Adams Kara Taylor, the concrete company Lafarge and the GG Gallery and its directory, Pelin Dervis, who after many exhibits with little relevance to Istanbul’s design culture have with this exhibit made a historic contribution.

Add comment January 21st, 2008

Two terrible articles on the Istanbul design and architecture scene

The current hype around Istanbul architecture and design while a boon for the local scene has also produced some unfortunate coverage in the international media. As evidence, lets look at two articles that have recently appeared in the U.S. press that are particularly egregious in their superficial and haphazard treatment of Istanbul design matters.

The first one is in the Boston Globe with the pedestrian title of “Inspiring Istanbul” written by Tom Haines. This article highlights the architect Gökhan Avcıoğlu who recently returned to Istanbul after what was apparently an unproductive stint at architecture in the U.S. Staying away from scuttlebut on this front, reading this article and the architect’s commtns, I was taken aback by Avcıoğlu’s failure to grab the moment. Given the opportunity to say something “inspiring” about Istanbul and its architecture he comes up with this line, and I quote…

“How can you deal with 5,000 years of history? I’m not afraid of it. I think I’m building a kind of history. I’m human, and I can add something.”

Whaaa…?!? He is building “history”? He can add “something”? We can all build something that will eventually be history…you can do this pretty much anywhere in the world I think. Build something and it will be history, sometimes sooner then later. This is as bland archispeak as I’ve heard in many a day.

If you read the rest of article and see what he has so to say, the thing that irks me is Avcıoğlu’s flippant attitude toward the subject that is designing and building architecture in Istanbul at this moment. After many years of not being allowed to build anything, with the new found interest by Turkish society in design, architects in Istanbul right now have some clout to design that they are throwing it away by failing to articulate what their architecture is about and why it is relevant. The vision thing, to put it simply.
Getting back to Avcıoğlu’s remark and its lack of vision, the question for contemporary Istanbul architecture and design is not just building some thing, it is what and how you are going to build that thing. Of course, this is a problem that has occupied modernism in Turkey and Istanbul’s architecture for almost 100 years. That is to say, the problem of the critical ground for the aesthetic and architectonic basis of Turkish architecture in light of history - a vision for what contemporary Turkish architecture should be and what it should represent.

That’s the reason Istanbul otherwise lacks great pieces of modern architecture. Largely because of this lack of a critical discourse surrounding architecture that we can clearly see exhibited in examples like Avcıoğlu’s. To be fair to the guy, the failure of vision in most Turkish architecture is not one person’s fault (and do I like his design for a public restroom in Kadiköy) but spokesman for contemporary architecture in Istanbul he is not. That role I would give to architects like Nevzat Sayın or Can Çinici who have been working steadily and surely here for the last 20 years with a historical and critical agenda.

Another guy who shouldn’t have been allowed to talk about design in Istanbul is one Efe Buluç, a Pratt educated young industrial designer recently moved to Istanbul. In an article in Dwell magazine by Reyhan Harmancı entitled this time, “Inside Istanbul” the Ankara born Buluç when asked to name a Turkish designer from Istanbul that he likes he comes up with…nobody…

Question: Contemporary designer from Istanbul that you like…

Answer: “Hmmm…no… [Buluc smiles apologetically]“.

Later in the Dwell article the reason Efe Buluç drew a blank when it came to contemporary Istanbul designers becomes sort of obvious. Commenting on a mystifying relationship between his hangout spots in Istanbul and the architecture of the master Ottoman architect Sinan, he comments…

“It’s interesting to have Kanyon (ed. shopping center) in Istanbul. You can’t compare Sinan to Kanyon—Sinan worked on a fantastic human scale—but Kanyon is very important because young Westernized Turks such as myself need a place to go and feel that there’s a modern environment.”

I’ve got some advice for Efe Buluç 1) your not going to learn too much about Istanbul design hanging out in a shopping mall 2) if you want to know more about Istanbul design, check out the work of these Istanbul designers… Aziz Sarıyer, Adnan Serbest, Tanju Özelgin, Ali Bakova, Yılmaz Zenger, Can Yalman and Oya Akman, to name just a few…

And to all those magazine and design editors out there who are considering covering Istanbul, I’ve got the title of the article for you, “Innovative Istanbul”. If you do more than scratch the surface, you might even find out why.

Add comment December 10th, 2007

The new Otomotion automotive lifestyle space, Doğuş Power Center, Maslak

Main showroom space, Otomotion, Doğuş Power Center, Maslak, Istanbul - lead designers, Kocacıklıoğlu Mimarlik

The Otomotion showroom, activity center and permanent exhibition space, the first of its kind in Turkey and the world, will include a number of different features highlighting the Volkswagen Group automotive products sold by the Doğus Group under one roof in a large 11,500m2, 11 meter high space located in the Doğuş Power Center shopping center in Maslak, Istanbul. This unique hybrid facility open year round features a flowing space mixing automotive showrooms and sales points for Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda, Seat and Porsche with leisure and exhibition facilities. Designed to encourage browsing, these automotive showrooms and exhibitions stands are integrated with unique multimedia exhibition spaces which are surrounded by features including a 180 degree multimedia exhibition room, conference facilities and meeting rooms, amphitheater, Kids Club, Café and hospitality center, shop, lounges and office space.

The first of its kind in Turkey, the hybrid space was designed by a team of designers led by Kocacıklıoğlu Mimarlik of Istanbul, that combined experts in interior and retail design, exhibition design and multimedia design. Kocacıklıoğlu Mimarlik, one of Istanbul’s better known architecture and interior design firms, led the design of the hybrid space in conjunction with noted exhibition designer and creative consultant to the project, Walt Behnke of New York. As lead designers and design managers their strategy was to create a dynamic and engaging multimedia environment that will function as a public space allowing visitors to learn more about the automotive products in an informal recreational setting similar to a museum or art gallery. Instead of consumers shopping for cars, Otomotion is intended as a casual environment where brand values are emphasized in a more ambient and passive way.

Realizing this goal, the large, central space is organized around amorphous fluid blob forms that create flowing lines that will facilitate casual browsing through the auto showrooms and exhibition spaces or leisure activities in the cafes and children’s areas. As design managers, Kocacıklıoğlu Mimarlik integrated the complex functions in this one-of-a- kind space to create a harmonious unified experience that includes the work of an international team featuring graphics designed by Apple Graphics of London and unique and specially created dome exhibition pods by Atelier MarkGraph of Frankfurt. In its architecture and overall proportions, the achievement we see in this project is that it sets the stage for a new type of space for Istanbul that reorganizes commercial retail space into something that resembles more of a public building such as an aquarium or museum. Kocacıklıoğlu Mimarlik’s success has been to create an ambient and subtle environment that puts the emphasis on experience and less on “shopping” to create a feeling of a public area. At a time when Istanbul is being filled up with one shopping center after another, Otomotion, in parts, retail showroom, exhibition and leisure spaces, provides a good example of how through innovative strategies and architecture, new public settings can be created for the benefit of all. Kocacıklıoğlu Mimarlik’s design supports this feeling by providing a casual, informal environment of abstract shapes and volumes for this new kind of public/private space.

Entrance, Otomotion, Doğuş Power Center, Maslak, Istanbul - lead designers, Kocacıklıoğlu Mimarlik

Theater area, Otomotion, Doğuş Power Center, Maslak, Istanbul - lead designers, Kocacıklıoğlu Mimarlik

Shop, Otomotion, Doğuş Power Center, Maslak, Istanbul - lead designers, Kocacıklıoğlu Mimarlik

Add comment December 10th, 2007

Turkey Cinemascope, exhibition of Nuri Bilge Ceylan photographs at the National Theatre, London

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Curved street in winter, Istanbul, 2004


Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Stormy weather on the Galata bridge, 2004

Filmmaker and photographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan has a show of photographs currently at the National Theatre in London. The exhibition, Climates: Turkey Cinemascope, is shown in parallel with his latest film, Climates/İklimler, which he directed and acted in (interestingly enough his character in the film was a mean architectural historian). The photographs in the exhibit were taken as a part of location scouting for the film and hence of a highly cinematic flavor, very close to the films photographic vision. Aesthetically they also owe something to the legendary photographer Ara Güler who was the first photographer to delve into the labyrinth of Istanbul to come up with artistic gems out of the urban mishmash. The city being as photogenic as it ends lends itself easily to this slighly aestheticized documentary style of photography. In the hands of a good photographer like Ceylan, his stern eye is able to capture the play between the fleeting flows of people and traffic against an urban backdrop of dark geometric beauty that are hallmarks of Istanbul’s urbanism.

[from artkrush via BldgBlog]

Add comment March 26th, 2007

Istanbul for Sale: Dubai Towers, IETT Bus Garage & TCK Directorate of Highways sites sold

The long awaited sale of the IETT Bus Garage site happened yesterday in a lively event and auction broadcast nationally live on television. Sama Dubai (Dubai International Properties) owned by the Sheikh of Dubai with a bid of $705 million USD won out over second place Zorlu Group, one of Turkey’s largest conglomerates, manufacturers of TVs, appliances etc. Zorlu was the same company that created a stir a couple of weeks back when their bid of $800 million USD gained them a parcel in Zincirlikuyu that currenctly is home to the Istanbul branch of Turkey’s General Directorate of Highways, TCK.

Sama Dubai’s victory brings to an end a long negotiation between the Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai’s minions and Istanbul and Turkey’s ruling AKP Party leadership. It was almost two years ago that the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality announced their intention to create a $5 billion joint venture with the Dubai group with the $500 million USD IETT Garage being the corner stone of the deal.

It seems Sama Dubai’s intention is to build something close to the twisting tower they had proposed in the original annoucement. Architecturally the twisting tower concept is closely related to Sama Dubai’s Dubai Tower project in Dubai which in itself is a superficial copy/paste of Santiago Calatrava’s twisting torso concept in Chicago and completed building in Sweden. The whole twisting motif seems to be a secondary by-product of the vogue in the blobular forms created by CAD software programs over the past decade.

Dubai Towers, Levent, Istanbul, Sama Dubai, 2005

I can not say i am not unhappy that this deal is going through as I think any and all internationalization of Istanbul and Turkey’s economy especially with this type of serious capital behind it is a good thing. I’m not going to quibble with the architecture of Dubai Towers because frankly I don’t think there is much hope in Sama Dubai or for that matter any other real estate developer in the Gulf creating anything original in architecture these days. This statement comes from my experiencing debating this point with these types of developers in the MIPIM real estate fair a couple of years back. Also it would also be correct to say that nothing original would’ve come out of the Turkish developers bidding for this deal as they are all fairly new to real estate development and architecture.

One of these deep pocketed neophytes, is the Zorlu Group, an electronics manufacturer with no experience in real estate development, in a similar bid and auction paid $800 million USD for a prize lot at the entrance of the Bosphorus Bridge owned by the State Highway Adminsitration, TCK, just a couple of weeks back. After the sale, Ahmet Nazif Zorlu, the head of the Zorlu Group, made some vague remarks about bringing a noted international architect to design the project. Most probably I’m guessing they will bring in some large SOM, KPFish corporate firm who will come up with a boxy agglomeration of volumes in steel and glass.

We are at the beginnings of an urban expansion in Istanbul. As with most things in Turkey, the process will be largely trial and error with hopefully the errors in architecture not being as heinous as those terrible examples that line the boulevards in Levent and Maslak today.

2 comments March 22nd, 2007