URBAN SERIES
a settlement that dates back to 7500BC, a historical city center resides inside the wall, an area that suffers from a very long time of conflict, forced emigration, and takeover. It needs to dust off and re-emerge from the skirts of the wall, regenerating from the very culture of aboriginal everyday life, giving an opportunity to a new beginning.
it is not as easy as it seems to create an already familiar environment for people who have been residing there for the rest of their lives, however, we are willing to take our chances!
sur neighbourhood
cherishes the culture of an old city by tracing the daily life
the urban trajectory of the diyarbakır city develops distinctively from a heterogeneous space generation inherent to location, climate conditions, society, and culture and transforms to a more universal and homogeneous structural logic, disregarding its original context. site-specific dynamics of "sur", like the appropriate human scale, the narrow street patterns, the materials used, and weather requirements provide us the potentials to reconsider and regenerate their relations to the human condition. In this manner, to question critically about the opportunities that accommodate within the potentials of sur and revision a new living style empowered with “collective” community notion that enriches the possibilities of spatial and social design. It is intended to develop a design strategy that reveals the potentials and allows spontaneity with casual encounters, pleasing coincidences, and various kinds of relations of the daily routines of life.
year
size
location
theme
status
2017
18.000 m2
turkey
diyarbakır
urban design
competition
1st place
in the framework of character and integrity, instead of strategies that create a top-down, global, homogeneous, uniform, monotype lifestyles, and cultures; particular differences, plurality, and heterogeneity are claimed as awareness of the power of the locus and the local community.
The “glossary” lays out a critical deconstruction of design parameters that are effective in shaping "sur". the physical environment of the existing “loci” structured with fundamental elements of traditional diyarbakır housings to the streets of sur is synthesized analytically to reveal and highlight the concept of collective "living, working, and sharing" to foster a community. the glossary works as a medium to interpret mentioned existing spaces and patterns in terms of reasoning a vibrant life.
how do we get help from the rituels, spaces and patterns of this indigenous culture and adapt to a fresh contemporary neighborhood to stimulate more life around ?
“
”
community-centered and participative design progress in correlation with citizen-oriented events and activities that encourage to see the urban public space as a shareable platform where people can easily restore powerful connections and foster a resilient community.
“
”
the context of "sur" is maintained as an urban interface holding to the skirts of a newly developed urban tissue. "dicle river and hevsel gardens" on the south encourage us to use the potentials and abilities of the inclining topography and thick trees on the hillside.
the “glossary” elements are resolved at the ground level in a public flow to enhance interactivity between people. Accordingly, narrow streets are revived to give away diverse sections and spaces scattered to the plot that improve social connectivity with various functions and events.
these are flexible units that intermediate the private and public, the residential and urban scale. the centric layout is fabricated similar to urban cores that naturally and anonymously evolve, however, the focus is now a flexible, spreading green fiber enabling multiple uses.
