HYBRIDIZATION Taksim square and Gezi park focuses our attention on a theme that is more than mere urban or architectural: the identity question that embraces both the aesthetical and historical aspects. Despite its partial emptiness the site presents a wide range of complexity; typically the history of an urban place is brought by the presence of different elements: a monument, a religious building, a urban conformation, etc. In this case the absence is equally fundamental, and it’s been expressed by a total or a partial removal of parts. The old military barracks are the perfect example of a total demolition that has evidently marked the memory of one side of the public, so much that it desires to bring them back from the past even if with other functions. The punctual deteriorations happened during the 2013’s clashes are a case of partial removal: from one side they inhibited a full use of Gezi park but from the other they are evident signs of a fundamental moment for the political life of the Country. The presence of heterogeneous elements and a botch context don’t help feeling a general order. The buildings surrounding the area differ for age and height but they generally have in common a poor construction quality. The three monuments in place are not valorized at all: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi and Taksim Maksemi are just part of the urban couronne and Cumhuriyet Anıtı is placed in the middle of a large paved esplanade. The other elements inside Taksim square (metro entrances, tree pots, seats and fountains) have not a clear position and don’t’ respect a corresponding hierarchy. Gezi park is a typical French garden: this is a positive aspect because it helps feeling a global identity but also a negative one for mainly two reasons: first of all the park lacks of continuity with the larger green area that follow more natural shapes; secondly it doesn’t give him a real special feature that can justifies its touristic initial function as it’s one of the several French gardens realized in Europe during the XIX and XX centuries, with the pejorative bearing of been built lately compared to the others.
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For all this reason we found our self in a tangled situation where the square cannot be preserved as it doesn’t work in the actual status but cannot be fully dismantled for its political symbol and need of wide capacity that only is actual position can bring; furthermore even if the park has not been declared national monument it cannot be completely modify because trees must be preserved and the architectural elements also bear historical signs. Therefore the classical planning approaches didn’t work and we passed the days like the two main characters of Pamuk’s “White Castle” novel reflecting on the idea of identity: should this place have a fully brand new future? Is it correct to preserve the past or not? What should we retain from it? At the very end we found out the only real identity of the place is its pre-existent hybridization. The initial error was we kept reflecting with single elements, the square, the green area, the architectural elements and their single isolated functions, trying to assemble them to obtain a new identity; at the contrary the proposed solution aims to enforce the actual atmosphere: what we tried to do is to use in our favor the sequence of administration’s mistakes and the lack of organic urban planning that endured during the years and make them the rule of the project. Therefore the separation between the square and the park has been avoided extending the green areas all around Taksim: that helps both giving a clear geometrical identity to the plaza and bringing continuity to the park. In the actual situation Cumhuriyet Anıtı is an element inside the square: in the project it is one of the three objects with Gezi stairs and the Atatürk Kültür Merkezi entrance that drill the square’s boundary. Following the same strategy the park becomes a hybrid between a French garden and a natural park: the Prost’s elements have been preserved but they don’t’ always maintain their function and in some cases they become more like ruins inside green surfaces.