39_AH017295

AH017295

SIGNIFICATION

Taksim has been the one of the most prominent districts of Istanbul since the latter was just a town then a city then an aggregate of village-like urban settlements connected by means of rather irregular freeways (the classifications therefore appellations of which are arguable; whether they are freeways, broad avenues, certainly not boulevards or wide roads open to any kind of traffic can hardly be decided) and other haphazardly built infrastructures such as trains and subways. Could the Arabic word Taksim be related to the more ancient Greek word, the one which Vitruvius also prefers to use instead of coining a Latin counterpart namely the ταξις with its rather complicated meanings and uses. Taksim was not only the location where water sources were divided and distributed to the various parts of the city but also in the course of history it became a center from which the main axis of transportation emanated then returned to it. Taksim with its historical development and with its nontraditional fortuitously created public square, its parks and cultural, recreational locational properties has been the undisputable center of the city of Istanbul.

Considered as the center of Istanbul, Taksim was overloaded with functions which were by different political structures hastily decided and located. “Taksim is the center and Turkey is a tourism country so let us build hotels there.” Instead of building Hotels close to the transportation infrastructures, say, airports, Taksim was chosen as the center for the exploding hotel industry. Once the Hotel district of Istanbul was Sirkeci and it was rightly so because the epoch’s transportation system coming from Europe culminated there. Even the most precious and historically invaluable heritages of Bosphorous, since they were also close to Taksim, were abused by that industry. It brought with itself its commercially supporting functions. Thicket offices, tourism agencies, restaurants, bars and night clubs, and the greatest entertainment centers of Turkey popped out immediately.

If Taksim were the center it also had to be the center of education therefore not only the buildings, which were generally old military buildings, were converted into Universities but also Smith’s hospital building with its clumsily designed Palladian facade- with the English admiration of Palladio whom the British architects always admired but never understood- and its porticus with its pre-Greek Ionic Order thus, doesn’t really deserve to be called an order, was included into the corpus of a University as a School of Architecture. Taksim became the University Campus not only of Istanbul but also of Turkey. A university campus devoid of necessarily connected open and closed spaces and (almost) unlimited expansional possibilities.

Thus, it also needed green areas, parks, recreational centers cultural centers auditoriums. The citizens of Istanbul needed green areas and parks and rather than creating green recreational parks which can be distributed abundantly in the innumerable natural spots of Istanbul, they all had to be at the center of Istanbul at Taksim.

Prost’s Design Prost beautifully designs an urban project which extends the existing nature by means of its representational areas, that is, parks, from Maçka valley towards Taksim. However, he does something curious at the final point: He covers the foundations of the of the demolished Military base with a Persian rug dispositioned according to the rules of French Baroque. The problem of the foreign architects who design in a different country is that they get the architecturally used traditional forms right, but since they just lack the habitus, they end up with bizarre designs. In other

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words, they just don’t know how the architects of that country put forms together and the way they evaluate and develop those forms thus how they apply transformations and evaluations to those forms.

Similar considerations are valid for the design of the Monument of Democracy: a bizarre object which has nothing to do with the understanding of the cultural revolution and the sensations that made it. With its Persian arches it also has nothing to do with forms of the Ottoman architecture: at least an Ottoman arch please! - even Corbusier recognized and respected it. In the course of years, it has become an object of betrayed sensations. In spite all of these since Taksim was the center and it had to have a monument. Here, I do not want to be understood as if I were against a monument for democracy in Taksim. On the contrary Taksim is a Res of the people, a public “thing” thus should be devoted to the free use of the citizens of a democratic society. The military revolution of 1960 also had to have its monument, which was later on demolished, there.

Since Taksim was the approved center it was also the distribution center of public transportation as well as its terminal. It was considered to be the final arrival point for the busses and other transportation vehicles. Without having a decent parking space for cars, it became the parking space for busses whose final destiny was also Taksim. But why just like water did everything had to come there, stop there, and be distributed from there? Couldn’t the public transportation pass by Taksim and connect other parts of the city as well? Not only the public transportation but also the vehicles of private transportation can pass by Taksim and can have their terminals at some more convenient parts of the city. Just like today’s underground system a root combines the University’s Campus with Yenikapı harbor and various other routes but also has a stop at Taksim. Taksim as a center should not also be a terminal for public transportation.

If Taksim were the center an auditorium as great as the economic conditions permitted had to be built there. Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, a beautiful building by a great architect was built for that purpose and became one of the symbolic places where people meet and participate in cultural events. Currently it is being replaced by another one which had to occupy as large as the site which was formerly used as a cemetery. (The destruction of cemeteries was a well-known Ottoman practice, an invaluably precious Roman heritage Philadelphion was sacrificed for the Şehzade mosque and its surrounding structures). If an opera house is needed –although the cultural development of the population in the last decades indicate that such a need hardly exists- then why shouldn’t it be built at a more convenient spot for instance at Yenikapı, an area filled with earth to be (ab)used for political purposes. Why a modest theater or a concert hall is not enough for Taksim?

A city center, the most important public space of the entire city also required a religious building which should also be as great as the horizons of the site permit. Taksim should be made even more crowded. Thus, a mosque elevating and repeating the basic octagonal form of the Maksem, except the central, the largest dome being hexagonal has been built. There is something going wrong here, in the European traditional production of cities a square is generally created in front of a Church not the other way around. In traditional cities public squares are formed embracing a religious building. The religious buildings namely the churches, or mosques showed not only the level architecture, engineering, and arts such as painting, sculpture even music have reached but also the general intellectual level, the combined levels of philosophy, science and arts reached by that society as a whole. Even the town or the part of the town was built around that religious building and its square and then the other parts developed within the years as the need grew. After Sinan’s Süleymaniye with its magnificent courtyard, gardens and cemetery was built it was the masons who worked in its construction created the entire neighborhood which is today called Süleymaniye. A religious building gives character to the locus in which it is created. Yet Taksim had already a character with its neoclassial and modern facades, historic buildings, and open spaces, thus a modern mosque of a modest size could have been sufficient for the purpose. A beautifully designed small Ottoman mosque, Hüseyinağa, which is almost unnoticeable from the street has also been open to religious practice. However, a huge Architectural monstrosity surreptitiously rising behind the ingeniously designed Maksem had to dominate the square. Ottomans glorified the city with mosques which not only created beautiful and unique city silhouettes which became the main material even for poetry-the beautiful poems called Şehrengiz especially “The King and the Beggar” which uses the metaphor of Solomon’s seal for the city shouldn’t be forgotten- but also created neighborhoods with astonishingly beautiful characters. Was it necessary to make Taksim also the center of religion thus to increase its already excessive load?

Undeniably, Taksim is the center of the city of Istanbul and without it Istanbul today would have been a huge assemblage of villages of different sizes and characters. However as such it doesn’t have to be the center of all possible urban activities, infra structures and it shouldn’t be a place where the best and largest buildings and facilities of all kinds could be found. The fact that Taksim is also one of the quarters of a city shouldn’t be forgotten.

In the last decade, there has been attempts to make access to the center easier by building auxiliary roads and tunnels; an act which only helped to increase the load of the area more. A boulevard is a unique Urban space where all kinds of urban components exist together and enjoy the services and facilities provided by that space. A boulevard, even if it mainly serves to the vehicle traffic is mainly a vital urban space for the everyday use of the people of a city. Taksim is at the intersection point of Tarlabaşı and Halaskargazi Boulevards (Cumhuriyet Caddesi as it approaches to the square, however here I will prefer the name of Halaskargazi to indicate a great boulevard) yet both boulevards at their arrival points to the square had to grotesquely disappear under the ground level without reaching the one and only square of the city of Istanbul. It is an urban crime to make culmination points of such boulevards in that fashion, that is, by taking them to the underground level and separating them from the spacious, pleasant pedestrian pavements by means of rather disturbing freeway barriers for the expense of devoting the square solely to pedestrian movement and totally forgetting the raison d’étre of its existence.

The solution is rather simple: To create spaces for the everyday user of the quarter without increasing the already excessive urban load and extend the use of the space for the visiting people of the city at different hours of the day by exploring and elevating the different properties of the square and increasing the quality of urban experience.

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A DESIGN STATEGY History inevitably establishes a starting plane for the future. It creates a plane of immanence for the future forms of space and spatial forms to be thought and created. This place is a different one from the plane of historical concepts although it may establish some invisible connecting bridges to it. Thus, on the plane of historical forms there is no context, that is, there are no texts, a corpus of signifiers, that coexist with others.

There are forms, repetitions, geometries, materials, and spaces. An actual space, in fact, is created by means of virtual spaces embedded in it.

Virtual spaces are not just imaginary spaces, they exist but only virtually to make the actual space; they are the necessary ingredients that make the actual.

Do we really want to evoke history as signification?

On the plane of historical forms six such places are recognized. They are reconstructed as and are rendered more recognizable by means of several intrusions to be used as schemata or diagrams to create the actual square without falling back onto any kind of functionalism or poststructuralism. Taken from the plane of historical spaces and after tiny emendations achieved mainly by means of trees and material additions reinserted to the plane to create the actual square. In other words, the actual design is what emerges from the superposition of these spaces.

The first of such virtual spaces is a rather large outdoor space “defined” by Istiklal Caddesi, Tarlabaşı Boulevard, Mete Caddesi and the buildings that vertically attest their existence. A row of apartment buildings with varying facades defines it on the East side while the blocks coming from İstiklal Caddesi and Tarlabaşı Boulevard culminating with the French Consulate and its church the Maksem and the Mosque under construction define it from the West. The sensational and affectional attributes of this space are strengthened by means of plantations of rows of trees.

The Virtual Space1 (Schema 1) 3

The Schema of the Virtual Space 1 used for the creation of the actual Space.

Virtual Space 1 Square Further Defined by Trees The second one of such spaces is defined by the existing hotel facing directly the Taksim square and the buildings that surround it, Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, and the stairs and ramps of Prost’s Gezi Park. The democracy monument which has no definable relations to the geometries of the existing buildings has also an existence in the creation of this virtual space.

Virtual Space 2 The second virtual space is converted into a diagram for the actual space by means of adding materials, lighting structures, and geometries which also emerge from existing affections or existing geometries. A row of trees extending the walls of the Gezi Park towards Tarlabaşı Boulevard gives the space a clearer definition. Geometrical Lineae Occultes emerging from the stairs of Gezi Park also signal the lines which establish the main 4

geometrical construction of the paving elements. Along these lines lighting fixtures which will be used to illuminate the larger portion of the square. These urban elements produce the energy they need by means of photovoltaic panels designed at their peak points.

Urban Lighting Fixture with photovoltaic panels: the tripod (or tricephale)

Virtual Space 2 final schema

A third virtual space perceptible on the historical plane of forms is defined by the three-high-rise masses of the Taksim hotels: The Divan Hotel and the Ceylan Intercontinental, which was a competition project, unfortunately highly damaged by its later owners, and The Marmara with its horizontally and vertically dominating mass. The row of buildings with their facades of various styles and non-styles following Halaskargazi Boulevard limits the western edge. The buildings that follow the SÄąraselviler Caddesi and then turn towards the square also create the sensations and perceptions of this space.

In the middle of this elongated space a garden with six rows of trees is created. This garden as in the beautiful gardens designed by Lutyens follow the lines of the building mass that is, the vertical mass of Divan Hotel which is one of the dominating solids of the space located at its 5

longitudinal axis of symmetry. Rows of trees planted on the right and left sides of the axis provide a more perceptible and easily conceivable space.

Virtual Space 3

Virtual Space 3 Final Diagram

Virtual Space3 birds-eye view Mongeri designs the Taksim Republic Monument at the intersection of the visual axes created by Halaskargazi Boulevard and SÄąraselviler caddesi.

The spaces created by Halaskargazi Boulevard and SÄąraselviler caddesi and the Monument designed by Mongeri cause adfections of a fourth irtual space.

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Virtual Space 4, Halaskargazi Boulevard, Sıraselviler Caddesi, and the Taksim monument.

This virtual space is also more clearly defined by means of tree plantations.

Virtual Space 4 Diagram Prost’s Gezi Park can also be taken as a virtual constituent of Taksim’s actual space. Unfortunately, his design has suffered drastic changes after its construction. The city club was replaced by a brutalist Hotel design, his design of green areas has been destroyed and open rooms surrounded by trees facing the Boulevard are corrupted and deformed, his octagonal garden was transformed into a circular fountain. More disappointingly the order of the planted trees has drastically changed.

Prost’s design with its open space rooms 7

Virtual Space 5 Prost’s Gezi Park with Ceylan Hotel

Virtual Space 5 with existing trees

While Prost was trying to create an Islamic geometry for the plan of the park, the gardener, hopefully not a landscape architect, strangely converted the green areas of the park into French parterre-like smaller green areas. The irregular growth of trees and the loss of many originally planted trees in the course of time almost totally ruined the original plantation and order of trees. The beautifully designed open-space rooms became the victim of that transformation.

Finally, the space created by taking Tarlabaşı and Halaskargazi Boulevards to a lower level is converted as the sixth virtual space.

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The Existing Tunnel

The existing solution takes the Halaskargazi and Tarlabaşı boulevards to an underground level which was a rather wrong decision to make.

Halaskargazi Boulevard meets the Square on the visual axis that bisects the Taksim Republic Monument and continues to Sıraselviler Caddesi.

The omission of such a mental construction robs the monument from its chosen unique locational properties. Taksim Square is mainly a square of Democracy, and both the vehicles and more importantly the pedestrian should approach the square having the monument on the center of their “geometric eye”. As a principal of urban design a boulevard should reach a place in this case a square without loosing its essential quality of having pedestrian spaces and character, having rows of trees, a wide road for the traffic, and facilities of varying sorts. In the proposed solution the boulevard reaches the square without losing none of its characteristics. It then joins the Tarlabaşı boulevard which connects it with the other and older parts of the city. The proposed solution also doesn’t interfere with the pedestrian movement on the square. The space of the existing tunnel is converted into spaces devoted to the use of people as well as to the use of local inhabitants. In the area for the use of emerging pedestrian traffic mainly of the underground stations several shops were created: a souvenir shop, a coffee shop selling also snacks are located there. Taksim was also famous with its shop which used to sell all kinds of newspapers and magazines. A same kind of little establishment should also be located there.

Virtual Space 6 The existing Elevators and stairs of the tunnel that lead to the ground level at the west side of the square are rotated. They connect the pedestrian coming from the west bank of Halaskargazi Boulevard to the Square and to Gezi Park. The streets in which they reach to the ground level should be closed to the vehicle traffic and solely be devoted to pedestrian use. Other built stairs, escalators, and elevators that lead directly to the square are left intact. A health care center which will also provide first-aid services is also provided. An exhibition hall following the curved root of the 9

Women’s Activity Center PLAN Scale: 1/1000 10

Gezi Park and Women’s Activity Center with its Sunken Gardens

existing tunnel and receiving undirect sun light is designed for general art exhibitions. In addition, a small exhibition space for the local artists to present their works to the public is also located.

Once Taksim was also the center for the filming industry; Yeşilcam was famous with its movies some of which exhibit invaluable photographic qualities that recorded beautiful historical scenes of the city as well of Taksim and its vicinity. A movie theater in which those Yeşilcam movies are to be shown may be an asset. The theater may also serve as a concert hall of modest scale for the local and the street musicians of Istiklal Caddesi.

The outdoor rooms defined by trees which Prots designed for the park are converted into sunken outdoor spaces with plantation without harming the existing foliage. Sunken cafes and restaurants with open courts also serve as meeting and relaxation spaces for the square and passengers of the Underground transportation system.

A vital ingredient of the design is the women’s activity center, which will give the whole edifice its name. Studios and classrooms are designed which serve the educational activities of women. They take not only direct sunlight and air but also provide a secure, pleasant, and isolated space by means of the spaces created by sunken gardens. Women can have several classes in this center which enable them to improve their daily life quality such as arts and crafts courses, language classes and have certain practical courses which could enable them to help their families and improve their family incomes.

A day-care center is also an inevitable component for such an activity center. Women who take certain classes at the activity center can safely entrust their kids during their educational activities. The day-care facility with its rather spacious sunken open-air playground also provide a service for women who work in the vicinity. With its protected sunken garden, it will provide a daily safe environment for the children while their mothers are at work or are taking classes at the center.

THE ACTUAL SPACE, SIGNIFICATION

….I offered him a glass of Vesuvian wine from the vineyards of Pompeii. “Prosit!” he said, raising his glass, and he drained it at a single draught.

Then before leaving, he asked me whether I bought my house as it stood or whether I designed and built it myself. I replied -and it was not truethat I bought the house as it stood. And with a sweeping gesture, indicating the sheer cliff of Matromania, the three gigantic rocks of Faraglioni, the peninsula of Sorrento, the Island of Sirens, the far-away blue coast of Amalfi, and the golden sands of Paestum, shimmering in the distance, I said to him “I designed the scenery.”

Curzio Malaparte

The project can hardly be called as “designed” in the conventional sense; it is rather what emerges from the simple super-positioning of the six presented Virtual Spaces. These virtual spaces following their abstractions are slightly “touched” to increase their sensational and perceptional qualities as open spaces. Efforts are made to embellish and drastically improve the essentially existing sensational qualities of the area. In fact, design efforts are made specifically at their intersecting and oftentimes overlapping regions. As a principle all the trees except the dried ones are preserved. The pattens of the existing, fortunately survived trees which currently have no definable pavement/ earth relationship led the way to the proposed design of Gezi Park. Groups of trees are enclosed in Island-like green areas and these areas are let to float on an ambulatory 11

concrete sea. Following the curves of the Islands and offset from them at a distance which will permit a sufficient distance for making sitting arrangements extruded granite benches are designed. Lighting fixtures which will illuminate the area from the ground level at nighttime also follow the contours of the Islands of tree groups. Trees provisioned for the overlapping virtual spaces, although coinciding with the concrete walking areas, are also preserved within the actual space of the park. On its side of the Halaskargazi Boulevard, as argued above, Prost designed outdoor rooms for the park, and this outdoor rooms are redesigned as sunken gardens which will provide more secluded, private spaces for the women’s activity center, children’s day-care center and its playground, and for private open air lounges which are directly connected to the park by means of stairs enabling direct access to the cafes and Restaurants. These sunken gardens also provide indirect sun and fresh air for the spaces, such as exhibition halls, designed in the virtual space of the tunnel. A rather wide undulating pedestrian ramp with an easy slope which follows the edge of the Virtual Space created by Tarlabaşı Boulevard and its row of trees cuts the park stretching up to the very heart of it. Due to the property rights of Ceylan hotel and its intrusion caused by the triangular geometry of its regulating lines this path cannot reach to the existing (again octagonally designed) library located across the school of Architecture. This pleasant path also provides an easy access to the park for the elderly, for the bicycle rider as well as for the disabled. Prost designs the park as a culmination point, a cemetery of Persian style for nature which he tries to extend toward Taksim and the bridge which connects this brutally destroyed nature in time and the park is not only preserved but also emphasized further by means of the trees coming from other virtual spaces. The area which is left between Halaskargazi Boulevard and the undulating path following that bridge which also provide access for the elderly, for the bicycle rider and for the disabled should be cleared off its meaningless, clumsily designed walking paths and should entirely be devoted to the use of people as a Lawn, shaded by trees.

People should freely be able to sit on that Lawn, read their books in a rather quiet and relaxing environment, have their sandwiches during lunch time, and spend their biological time with their children and families in this precious leftover space from nature partly shaded by beautiful trees.

With its unique location and natural properties, the lawn will be a relaxing place for the use of people within the tumult and ongoing struggle of surrounding city life. Prost’s park not only dominates its surroundings but also vomits its symmetrical existence to the square by means of grand stairs and a symmetrical, unfortunately partly destroyed system of ramps. This gesture of the park inevitable makes it a stage from which it addresses to the population of the square disregarding whether they are actually there or not.

And disregarding whether people are actually there or not, disregarding the future events which may and should take place there, the physical existence of the Taksim Republic Monument and the public memory of the citizens of Istanbul renders it a square of democracy. Taksim square is a public room in which democratic rights are pronounced, discussed, and demanded. A plane where the people may share the equal power of intelligence, is already there waiting to be perceived and experienced. All human, therefore cultural activities are certainly well-come there.

Istanbul has a rather mild climate therefore, music festivals, classical and rock concerts, meetings with varying purposes, open air art exhibitions may also be held. The students of women’s activity center may also hold some exhibitions at certain periods of the year exhibiting the works of its students to the public. In autumn as well as in spring it may be perfectly be a place for book fairs. It should also continue to be a place where new year’s celebrations are held, lighting arrangements for night-time uses should also be made (a sectional study showing the direct light and the ambient light possibilities is provided). It is a public room with a wonderful garden and a stage thus, any democratic activity of citizens should freely take place.

Podrecca usually plays the card of designing the paving of his beautiful squares using the metaphor of a rug. Here, on the contrary, the patterns of the square emerge from the geometries of the above presented virtual spaces. A certain touch of creativity and ingenuity which Vitruvius respected most is also inevitable.

The geometrical pattern of the square not only extents along the Halaskargazi Boulevard but also establishes a grid for the benches, light fixtures and other urban furniture that emerge from it rising up to functionally required levels. These urban fixtures specifically designed for the square are not conceived as elements for the decoration of urban spaces, as they conventionally are. Instead, together with the trees coming from the virtual space diagrams they populate the square. And since the benches are not designed as fixed-self standing urban furniture but as smooth waves of a surface, as gently undulating parts of it, they don’t interfere with any possible actions and activities of crowds of people, the actual users of the space. The trees also provide pleasant shaded spots during the summer period. ( The necessary water level for those trees is between 1 and 1.5 meters thus a ditch of 2 meters height and depth filled with earth along the rows of trees is sufficient for the healthy growth of trees, this arrangement can perfectly be made according to the plans and sections of the underground transportation system). The visual axis of Halaskargazi boulevard is also further emphasized by means of the pavement design on the sides of which light fixtures placed on the ground.

On both sides of the boulevard temporary stopping spaces for the ground level traffic and covered bus stops are located. Additional bus stops are located on the side of the square which faces Mete Caddesi just in front of Atatürk Kültür Merkezi. In Taksim around the square no provisions for busses long-time waiting should be made. Within the city’s public transportation system Taksim should be just one of the ordinary stops and it shouldn’t be loaded further by means of creating long time stopping facilities. After the construction of the underground transportation the main access to the public became that underground system. The underground infrastructure already provides direct access to the square and for the pedestrian who uses that system it is possible for the pedestrian to access to the surrounding vital points such as Istiklal Caddesi, Halaskargazi Caddesi, Mete Caddesi, and Sıraselviler caddesi and Gezi Park without cutting the Vehicle traffic at points heavily loaded. Thus, taking the traffic to the ground level and converting the leftover tunnel spaces into spaces of human activities, on the Taksim square level no problems for free pedestrian movements are created.

The nostalgic İstiklal Caddesi tram should stop at the end point of it and shouldn’t be circulating around the monument for this destroys the axial relation of the monument to Halaskargazi Boulevard and Sıraselviler Caddesi and causes the monument to be perceived as if it were floating on the surface without having any conceived relations to the open space.

Again, the square of Taksim, by means of certain conscious projects, by means of certain unconsciously done interventions, hastily proposed and applied projects in a sense reflecting the level socially and culturally reached levels of society establishing a sinuous curve on the time and cultural ordinates of an imaginary coordinate system has already been designed, or rather semi-consciously produced if the root word pro-ducere could be used without doing any injustice to it, loaded with signifiers in the memory of its citizens, its users who developed certain affections during the course of history, and in the historical consciousness of a nation (hopefully still there is one left), and have been overloaded by means of varying actual functions and by the unconsciously built infrastructures which without any conscious planning, instead with cunning planning

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tricks was supposed to improve. Therefore, it is only necessary to emphasize its existing assets, and improve the quality of public life, and prevent any further structural loadings. The project proposes no additional structures!

Istiklal Caddesi which once had a loaded vehicle traffic is now overly populated with such immense crowds that at certain days and times of the day it becomes almost impossible to walk on its pavements. Cafes, bars and restaurants and other spaces for leisure along Istiklal Caddesi as well as along the streets connected to it “drain” that mass of people towards Galatasaray. In fact, from Galatasaray to Tünel starts the most interesting part of İstiklal caddesi with its incredibly rich historical buildings and open spaces one encounters along it or by just taking several steps toward the rather narrow streets connected to it, with the book stores in the vicinity, with the amazing artists and entertaining musicians whose music inevitably slightly changes the bodily movements of the passersby even if they essentially do not pay attention to it, with its music shops, and religious buildings, their courts and gardens. Thus Istikal is the main attraction space for great masses for whom the project provides access both for the party from Mete Caddesi, Halaskargazi Boulevard, Sıraselviler Caddesi, and the party coming from the underground and the funicular systems without any interference of vehicles. The Maksem introduces the square to the pedestrian a unique encounter (since it is far from human scale and thus somewhat far from perception the newly built mosque thankfully does not interfere with that apperception during that special encounter) coming from Istiklal by erasing the intuition of time and thus causing a timeless experience. However, the rows of cafes and their haphazardly installed, and purely commercially conceived facades totally destroys the dream. The facades of that particular block should be totally renewed and a new design as a totality should be extended towards both sides of the corner. On the terrace of this rather low mass, green areas and open recreational spaces can be designed (the famous corner perspective drawing of Karlsband colonnade By Otto Wagner and the series of shops with their gardens on their upper floors at Vezneciler next to the aqueduct of Valens readily come to my mind as excellent schemata for a solution).

The demolished Atataürk Kültür Merkezi was perfectly sufficient for the Taksim Square and with its excessively Modernist façade has created a public memory thus made it into one of the most important symbolic structures of Taksim. In the current project this façade is pretended to be preserved and this may seem to be a correct action at the first glance. However, since it is a reflecting façade now it can hardly be said that it is the same façade it was before its demolition. Now it reflects the great mass of a huge mosque whose appearance cannot possible be related neither to any Architectural style nor to any kind of plane of thought. A doubled bizarre adfection. The being designed and built Center also misses a great spatial opportunity by adding little sprouts to its main mass. Instead of adding those repetitively shrinking shoeboxes for differing sizes to the main body the design should have created a Cultural Promenade which, starting from Smith’s building, the School of Architecture, then reaching to Sedat Hakkı’s octagonal Library, escalating toward Taksim behind the rows of apartments on Mete caddesi and passing by modest exhibition halls and small auditoriums, perhaps for quartets, partly visible from it, should have finally reached to Taksim square. Yet this building is still a great attraction point for people and hopefully will remain so in the future. It is one of the most important elements of Taksim’s scenery.

Taksim Square of Democracy, The new Façade of Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Halaskargazi Boulevard should not only bring the vehicle but also the pedestrian to the square on the same level. As I emphasized above, the Halaskargazi, Sıraselviler and Republic monument relation is a meaningful, and heroic relationship. The Republic monument has no relation neither to the mass of the Atataürk Kültür Merkezi nor to any other existing buildings including the Maksem and the mosque, nor to any other conceptual construction within the square. The monument’s only reference points in the square, only anchoring axes are found in relation to these important ingredients of this square are the virtual spaces created by both Sıraselviler and Halaskargazi. With the existence of these spaces the monument can be regarded as an object belonging to the square. To the geometric eye bodies are added: The pavement designed emphasizes the visual axis also provisions of ground light fixtures and wall-washers for the monument are made. The rows of trees not only further emphasize that idea but also help both spaces to be perceived and finally understood as boulevards that lead to the most important symbolic site of the city. The trees that should be planted along Halaskargazi and Tarlabaşı Boulevards will also provide a certain integrity and continuity for the facades which have differing forms and commercial signs haphazardly placed over them. They will also create a pleasant shaded walking space for the pedestrian which is one of the essential properties of a boulevard.

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Prost’s Park is another attraction point that helps the production of the space the platform to which its stairs ascend being a space for stages of any kind all kinds of urban events, even country wide festivals can be held there. Using today’s audio-visual technologies classical music concerts with the orchestra installed on the steps by means of precautions easy to take. The elderly and disabled visitors of the park not only have formal access to the park by means of existing formal ramps but also have access right to the very center of it by means of a ramp indicated by means of one of the virtual spaces extracted. The sunken Women’s Center is also directly connected to the Park and to the Underground transportation system by means of pleasant sunken gardens and a rather wide steps descending from the space which is also used as a patio for the proposed cafes. With the undulating bridge extended to the Divan Hotel the possible access to these spaces are also free from vehicle traffic.

Night-time Lighting Study (Section) The aim of this project is by means of spatially emphasizing its virtual components and living assets to make the place more enjoyable for the people who believe in democracy.

Taksim, Square of Democracy View

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Gezi Park: Island-shaped Gardens, Extruded Benches and Ground Level Lighting

Taksim, Republic Monument, Maksem, People from Women’s Activity Center

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Women’s Activity Center, Sunken Lounge with Curious Visitors

Taksim, Democracy Square, Pedestrian Level View Note: As the “Specifications” document demands, an Urban Planner (Ph.D) and a Landscape Architect will be included in the Team as advisors, an expert on open space lighting may also be added to the team.

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