THE PAZARS: The Urban and Tectonics Structures of Istanbul’s Open Markets Project Abstract
Turkey’s neighborhood markets, pazars, penetrate every neighborhood one day a week for centuries. Yet, neither this ephemeral marketplace nor the man-made generative structure that defines its practice has changed with any significance despite social, cultural and technological transformations. The pazars’ fundamental practice of place-making, in its absolute agility, simplicity and responses to terrain and climate, has been nearly perfected along with the choreography of set-up and take-down. The structure is a distinctive practice of co-creation; using the forces of kinetics and redundancy to create compact or expansive market place. What is unique about it is the use of passive open space, like streets, watersheds or residual lands, but never an active public space as parks, highways or public squares. On this ground, this research documents the information about pazars as valuable intangible heritage encompassing the locations of the pazars in the city, their specific characters and means of constructing daily open markets. The insight of the study is aimed to offer novel agile approaches in regard to the spatial design for contemporary open-air exchanges as well as new directions in man-made generative structures for ephemeral place-making in the cities.
The PAZAR: The Urban and Tectonic Structures of Istanbul’s Open Markets GRAHAM FOUNDATION RESEARCH GRANT 2015 Lead Researcher: Alexis Şanal, SANALarc