Archinect - News

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.

Editor's Picks #322

2013-07-02T12:00:00-04:00

News
RIP - Iconic Danish architect Henning Larsen died in his sleep in his home in Copenhagen on Saturday, June 22, 2013. Henning Larsen was 87 years old.

Lonnae O'Neal Parker of the Washington Post reported that after 14 years in the making and despite recent protests over the Gehry design, the Eisenhower Memorial Commission voted "to move forward with the Frank Gehry-designed memorial to the 34th president". have cheered "Hopefully the pious "National" Civic Art Society can now go bankrupt. LOL!"

Orhan Ayyüce posted a link to #occupygeziarchitecture where a group of architects are documenting the temporary structures that were destroyed by the police in Gezi Park, Istanbul. The group explains "The protests in Istanbul indicated one simple thing for architects (designers?): We need new definitions for architecture in situations when architecture is removed from architects.Each unique structure that we encounter in the streets and Gezi Park has its own in-situ design and impl...

Editor's Picks #321

2013-06-25T11:32:00-04:00

For the latest edition of the Student Works: series Archinect featured work by two AA Visiting Schools one held in Athens & the other in Istanbul. Completed prior to the recent OccupyGezi unrest, Noise De-Former (one of the projects from the Istanbul school) "aimed to materialize the fluctuating noise levels in Taksim Square by creating an interface which can regulate noise, enabling a more comfortable environment for the public resting in Gezi Park".

News
Inspired by a recent discussion re: the Influence of Robert Venturi on Louis Kahn Orhan Ayyüce; highlighted a significant thesis by then Master of Science in Architecture candidate Sam Rodell in Washington State University completed in 2008. In the thesis Mr. Rodell, "considers the question of how Louis Kahn’s development as an architect was shaped by the influences of Robert Venturi. The personal and professional interaction between these two historically significant architects began late in Kahn’s career and early in Ven...

#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.

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

Editor's Picks #318

2013-06-05T01:58:00-04:00

Evan Chakroff penned Art Basel comes to Hong Kong a report wherein Mr. Chakroff analyzed "During the yearly art fair in Basel, Switzerland, the city is activated and reconfigured, and art is brought to the forefront of civic discourse. What, if any, impact could the fair have on daily life in a city of 7 million? How would this art world mega-event translate to the Hong Kong context?"...

News
Orhan Ayyüce drew our attention to #occupygezi in Istanbul where mass protests and battles are still raging over the government plans to build a "Shopping Mall” on the site of an historic civic park.

Parad0xx86 shared "I was in Besiktas and Taksim today. Taksim is like a total war zone with windows smashed, cars turned upside down, beer cans all over the streets..All the buildings have anti-Tayyip graffitis. There are thousands of people in Taksim right now and they aren't going anywhere". mantaray pointed out "that NPR interviewed protesters today, and one of them turned out to be an a...