Archinect - News

Is Istanbul heading for renewed protests over Gezi Park?

2015-01-14T14:19:00-05:00

Now the barracks plan has been revived. [...] Will one of central Istanbul’s few remaining green spaces become a symbol of consumerist might and the weakness of people power? Activists have pledged to take to the streets should the plan go forward. “If this project really comes to pass despite the high level of objection from the public, that will create a second wave of uprisings, and this time it will be more influential,” said Eyup Muhcu, the head of Turkey’s main architects’ union.

Previously

Plans to redevelop Taksim Square cancelled by judge

2013-07-05T13:37:00-04:00

Can Atalay, a lawyer for the Chamber of Architects which brought the lawsuit, said the administrative court ruled in early June at the height of the unrest that the plan violated preservation rules and unacceptably changed the square's identity. It was not clear why it had only now been released.

Ayla Jean Yackley reported that a Turkish court has canceled an Istanbul building project backed by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan which provided the trigger for nationwide anti-government demonstrations last month, a copy of the court decision showed.

#occupygezi architecture

2013-06-24T20:52:00-04:00

"The protests in Istanbul indicated one simple thing for architects. We need new definitions for architecture in situations when architecture is removed from architects." -Yelta Köm, the organization founder

Group of architects are documenting the temporary structures that were destroyed by the police in Gezi Park, Istanbul. Take it from the Turks, the original nomads from Central Asia.

Taksim Square and Gezi Park Protests: Designing a Common Present, Future, and Past

2013-06-17T20:22:00-04:00

I call these projects urbicide because of the social and ecological damages they cause, such as land speculation, expulsion of the lower-middle classes from the urban center, and the zoning of green areas for development. Among the projects is a third bridge over the Bosphorus, a canal bisecting Istanbul in the north-south axis near its western border, and the redevelopment of Taksim Square.

Urban Heroes of Istanbul: It’s About Public Space

2013-06-11T19:30:00-04:00

The protest was an effort to save a park by occupying that very park; it was not a symbolic or ideological demonstration like the Occupy Wall Street movements, but a primal struggle between human bodies and bulldozers, that made the political discourse all the more potent...

Jesse Honsa, (an architect and urban designer in Istanbul, and is co-founder of OpenUrban), has written a short piece, in which he shares his experience over the last days of the protests in and around Taksim Square.

h/t amlblog

Full-Page Ad Inspired By Turkish Protests Is One Of Indiegogo's Fastest Campaigns Ever

2013-06-05T14:39:00-04:00

As protests have rocked Turkey over the past few days, three Turkish professionals in the U.S. decided on Sunday that they had to take some action. Turning to their technology backgrounds, the trio launched a crowd-sourced fundraising campaign on Indiegogo to buy a full-page ad in the front section of the New York Times in support of their fellow Turkish citizens who’ve clashed with the government across dozens of cities.

For more information on the protests in Istanbul, check Orhan's report with ongoing commentary. Here's a link to the Indiegogo campaign.

Solidarity with Istanbul

2013-05-31T11:14:00-04:00

Last few days Istanbul has been the site of mass protests and battles raging for the Gezi Park (translating as stroll park) in Taksim District where the prime minister Erdogan's government wants to build a "Shopping Mall," a kitschy copy of a 19th. century building, Taksim Military Barracks, that was demolished in 1940 on the recommendations of French architect Henri Prost who is known for his work with Tony Garnier.

The morphing of the existing park with grown trees to enclosed courtyard style kitsch shopping mall.

The decision to demolish the park is really a most recent assault in accordance with the over commercialization of this historic city of 16 million people. The blunt action to send bulldozers to uproot the trees certainly hit a nerve with thousands of protesters who are fed up with government's draconian measures of late, threatening the basic liberties of Turkish society at large and the invasion of the publicness of the open spaces in Turkey's largest c...