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The full details of Foster + Partners’ plan for an urban recovery of the earthquake-damaged Turkish city of Antakya and Hatay province have been made publicly available for the first time since the project was announced last October. The regeneration plan entails eight separate ‘design... View full entry
Fatih Ekşi, the popular Istanbul-based architectural designer, has shared some thoughts on the creative process behind his work, which has garnered over a million combined followers on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. His followers were recently treated to some playful, food-inspired... View full entry
The master plan for a new rebuilding project in Turkey’s southeastern Hatay province has been revealed by Foster + Partners in association with the Türkiye Design Council (TDC) in response to the devastating 7.8 magnitude Turkey-Syria Earthquake which displaced thousands and destroyed a... View full entry
If you are an architect, you have to understand what the genius of the place is, and you have to catch the spirit of the place, and Istanbul is about the water [...] And the Istanbul Modern is about a dialogue between the building and the water. — The New York Times
RPBW’s first project in Turkey comes as the country begins its rebuilding following the devastating February earthquake. Towards this concern, Piano says, “When you make a place for people for art and music, accessibility and safety are fundamental elements.” A survey of his... View full entry
Conservators in Istanbul are racing to safeguard scores of at-risk heritage sites in the wake of Turkey’s deadliest earthquake in modern history, bracing for the probability of an even greater disaster in a city straddling an active faultline. — The Art Newspaper
Consequences of incumbent President Recep Erdoğan’s culture wars and the fallout of a “real-estate mentality that supersedes cultural heritage” have become unnecessary obstacles for volunteers who are up against the impossible challenge of securing 35,000 heritage sites around Istanbul... View full entry
The first dedicated museum of modern and contemporary art in Turkish history is finally opening its doors this week following the completion of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW)-designed Istanbul Modern in the country’s most populous city. Clad in an “iridescent” envelope of aluminum... View full entry
The catastrophic events have devastated countless heritage structures, archaeological areas and religious sites, many still active places of worship, across an area so vast that it encompasses ten Turkish provinces and impacts more than 13 million people.
Though less extensively reported, damage to heritage sites is most significant in the southernmost province of Hatay. The city centre of Antakya [...] has been almost completely flattened.
— The Art Newspaper
The World Bank estimates the total physical damage in Turkey to be approximately $34.2 billion. The Gaziantep Castle, a 2nd-century fortress later expanded under Emperor Justinian, and Aleppo's ancient Citadel in neighboring Syria are perhaps the most significant historic sites to be heavily... View full entry
Swedish nonprofit Better Shelter has announced the provision of 5,000 emergency shelters in Turkey following the major earthquake that has so far killed over 47,000 people across the country and neighboring Syria. The shelters were made possible through a EUR 10 million (approximately USD... View full entry
Arrest warrants have been issued in Turkey in response to the devastating earthquake that killed more than 34,000 people across the shared border with Syria last Monday. The BBC writes that a total of 113 warrants were issued to individuals within the country, reportedly including architects... View full entry
Why did so many buildings fall down? [...]
[Alanna Simpson] says the building codes in Turkey were updated again in 2018. But the country's "legacy buildings" are still vulnerable, and that goes for much of the rest of the world, too, she says. "It's a global problem."
— NPR
Of the more than 3,000 Turkish structures destroyed by Monday’s devastating earthquake, experts say the majority were concrete and masonry infill constructions built before Turkey updated its building codes in the wake of the 1999 İzmit earthquake that killed 17,000. A 2018 construction... View full entry
Reactions are pouring in following the devastating 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria early Monday morning. There are no estimates available yet as to the number of structures either collapsed or damaged across the region, but a minimum of 3,400 lives have been... View full entry
Zaha Hadid Architects has designed a collection of tents to be used as schools, clinics, and emergency shelters for displaced communities. The 27 tents, constructed with the support of the Education Above All Foundation, have been donated to the International Organization of Migration (IOM) and... View full entry
A number of marble tiles on the floor of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, which was turned back into a mosque in 2020 after serving as a historical museum for decades, have reportedly been cracked by heavy machinery used to clean the building last week. — Artnet News
“It’s like a fairground now,” one tour guide reportedly told the Turkish opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet in reference to the change in status that occurred in 2020, when the site was reconverted into a mosque and conferred back into the auspices of the Department of Religious Affairs... View full entry
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan opened the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge over the Dardanelles Strait on Friday (18 March). It has a central span of 2,023m, which means it usurps the title of world’s longest suspension bridge from the Akashi Kaikyo crossing in Kobe, Japan. — Global Construction Review
As reported by Global Construction Review, the new bridge cost €2.5 billion ($2.76 billion) to construct and is expected to generate €5.3 billion ($5.84 billion) in economic output, creating 118,000 jobs and €2.4 billion ($2.65 billion) in revenue. Named after an Ottoman naval victory... View full entry
UNESCO has once again officially expressed its “deepest regrets” and is now asking for an updated report on the conservation of the Hagia Sophia site in Istanbul, Turkey, adding another chapter to the embattled country’s ongoing feud with the UN’s cultural apparatus. The body... View full entry
