Versatility and Vicissitude workshop day 3,4,5

Pulpitum .maket

Versatility and Vicissitude* Workshop.day 1

Pulpitum . Kadıköy /Layers of site plan

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gbo (de)gradation

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PULPitum (Kadıköy)

The housing project is situated on former Kadiköy Tuesday Market site. The site was long known as a huge market place working on Tuesdays and placed between a highway, apartment buildings pattern (which also carry dense commercial stripe on the horizontal 0+ and some on vertical) and a stadium. Through the site passes a street and a river and it is kind of a knot point because it can be reached by a bus, train, and recently metrobus. In the end of 2008 it stopped serving as a marketplace so now it is a huge empty space used as a parking lot. The metropolitan municipality of Istanbul has triggered a project for the site to transfer it into a closed market place which would be opened 7 days a week, but it is more likely that the project will turn out to be another of numerous shopping malls in Istanbul.

Probably the most critical part of the project is the fact that it is a 45 000 m2 flat, plain space and that it was never structured before. Before it became concrete desert it was a meadow. So there was not much things to hold on to except the structures and their functions texture and the street grids surrounding it. We started the project by elimination of space which should be left empty because of its potential function of a knot inside the site.

It is easy to predict that any residential building placed on the Kadıköy site would (immediately or by the time) be transferred into mixed use buildings as the ones surrounding the site and that fact was a pathway that lead to again think of undefined spaces in apartment buildings: staircases and corridors, because if we are predicting the very possible commercial use of the collective residential buildings, we had to define spaces which would be used as connectors between residential and commercial spots.

Since the idea made in Şişli was just a proposal for which realization the building would have to be reorganized, we wondered whether the idea developed in Şişli could be injected into a collective residential project in Kadıköy. So shortly, the idea for Kadıköy was to take the idea developed in Şişli and apply it as an important element in Kadıköy project so that again, by means of public and private, we could try to define undefined spaces by minimizing their number and carrying them out of the core. By that . The aim was to create a partly adaptive space which would develop by its usage, to form a living skeleton after its users are integrated.

Each building block is settled on its grid which forms its construction with beams and columns. Vertical circulation cores containing stairs and elevators are integrated into the buildings construction grid and are connected to horizontal public circulation which is multiplied vertically. Living spaces are part of living units or flats, and they are connected to the horizontal public circulation by semi-private areas which guide users to the entrances of living spaces. Vertical circulation cores go down to 0 and -4m where they connect with the public area with its commercial spots and public transportation. Living units or flats are designed in few types for to be used by different profiles and in different purposes.

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PULPitum

The start point of the project were the vertical circulation cavities in apartment buildings and the fact that, generally, they do not have any other purposes than being a path on the Z axis towards the destination point and serving as a filter area between public and private spaces. Briefly, planned only to serve their function of transferring, vertical circulation cavities are usually narrow, dark and boring places.

In Şişli, and actually the whole axis from Harbiye to Mecidiyeköy, the apartment buildings make ~95% of the area. They are usually 6-9 stories high. By time they have degenerated into multifunctional buildings with a bold horizontal commercial axis on the 0+ level continuing vertically and ending with 3-4 stories of residential spots. So when we start analyzing their vertical circulation cavities, they somewhat got closer to public space, interface actually, without getting any less narrow, dark or boring. Also after taking few buildings as a focus area and analyzing their vertical circulation cavities we realized that they take up to 15% of the total area of the space, and considering the fact that dense people traffic is not present (because vertical commercial points are clerical type) 15% means quite a lot of ‘narrow, dark and boring’ space.

Our proposal to the site is creating vertical circulation ports from outside (backyards of the apartment blocks) that would serve few apartment buildings at once. That would save space, increase the people traffic, and with the fact that they are placed outside, become more welcoming. With much more space to spread outside, some other functions may be included. Bringing new function doesn’t have to mean transforming the space into common apartment living rooms, just integrating something which can increase the time span of spent time there than the general 0.5 seconds per stair, we usually spend. The flexibility of the created space will lead to spontaneous usages which will emerge with time.

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(in)COMPOSIT

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