Archinect - News

Soundtrack of a city: Baba Zula "Gecekondu"

2012-12-11T11:20:00-05:00

"The new album narrates urban life. It is rather personal music, bound up with this city, there are images of an asphalt jungle and a house that is being built in a city, and we always support the ones who don't have power." -Baba Zula

The new Baba Zula album is called "Gecekondu," a term used in Turkey for illegal settlements built on the fringes of major cities like Istanbul or Ankara. These growing slums, built with the simplest materials, have become home to many newcomers trying their luck in urban centers.

One could argue, though, that there's more dignity and beauty in the gecekondus than in the ritzy financial districts now conquering the legendary inner city areas of Istanbul. One example is a historic district situated in the shadows of the Byzantine city wall, known as Sulukule, which has been almost completely torn down.

The band opposes the gentrification of Istanbul.

Dror's Vision for HavvAda

2012-09-28T13:00:00-04:00

New York firm Dror today unveiled designs for a collosal artificial island to be created right off the coast of Turkey, not far from Istanbul. The project, dubbed HavvAda, is envisioned to rise from the sea by piling up one billion cubic meter of soil carved out of the main land from the construction of the proposed Canal Istanbul, another ambitious mega project currently proposed to run parallel to the Bosporus. Inspired by Buckminster Fuller, six gigantic geodesic domes will lift up artificial hills on the island which will be covered with residences and commercial buildings for a population of several hundred thousand people.

Find a detailed project description and images courtesy of Dror below.

A century after the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed; Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan presents the Canal Istanbul project and offers to re-visit the map of the city. One billion cubic meter of soil may be carved out of the main land in order to create the canal. Turkish deve...

Turkey’s Towering Ambition

2012-09-17T18:07:00-04:00

The larger irony is that in calling for a huge new mosque in the tradition of Sinan, Erdoğan may be missing the more fundamental lesson of the Ottoman architect’s work. As Bruno Taut, the German architect who emigrated to Turkey to flee the Nazis, argued, Sinan was himself a proto-modernist whose ability to create extraordinary beauty from novel engineering had more in common with twentieth-century German functionalism than earlier Islamic architecture.

In a politically analytical article in New York Review of Books, Hugh Eakin examines the power policies of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and his ambitious plan to crystallize the country's image and political agenda via a single building. A large new mosque in classical Ottoman style is planned to crown Istanbul's highest hill. A new mosque that nobody visiting Istanbul will be able to not see. As if the city with many masterpieces of religious buildings yet need another post modern one to refresh Erdogan's political and moral legacy via architecture.

There was an unofficial competition in Turkey with architects and others expressed the absurdity of the plans.

New Tower to Dwarf Istanbul’s Minarets

2012-01-12T12:01:00-05:00

Istanbul’s evocative skyline is set to be capped by a new peak, as architects on Wednesday unveiled plans to build a tower almost 300 meters high, which will rival the highest buildings in Europe. Scotland-based architectural firm RMJM’s office in Dubai said that it received planning approval for “Metropol Istanbul,” a vast 500,000 square meter project, which includes three towers, a 30,000 square meter public shopping mall, offices and luxury apartments.

Augmented Structures: Architecture Beyond Visible

2012-01-10T14:46:00-05:00

Salon2 has shared with us their completed 400m2 architectural installation on the façade of Yapı Kredi Bank Culture Building at Galatasaray Square in İstanbul.

The first stage in the Augmented Structures project with the Augmented Structures v1.1: Acoustic Formations / İstiklâl Caddesi installation which reanimates phenomena (architecture, sound and visual arts) that appear to be completed and concluded. The acoustic memory of İstiklâl Caddesi is first transformed into an architectural surface and then this solid form became a dynamic visual performance.

The project brings together disparate disciplines like architecture, sound and the visual arts which influence one another to such a degree that it is impossible to separate them. While the project aims to interpret the world in visual and aesthetic terms, in its capacity as an "interdisciplinary transformation" project it also questions the point where art and architecture stand today and the point they might reach in ...

Turkey: Diverse Istanbul Neighborhood Faces Last Days

2011-07-29T22:16:59-04:00

Architects in 2009 described Istanbul’s downtown neighborhood of Tarlabaşı as an unsafe place for children -- a district whose destruction and reconstruction would be in the interest of its residents. Few dispute that Tarlabaşı is run-down and that many of its residents live below the poverty line. But the congested neighborhood is also one of the few remaining places in the city center where there is affordable housing for the urban poor.