Young Architects Program International

The most important question we are dealing with is “Does sustainability has a global strategy?”

Our answer to that is: “NO!”

Istanbul, and all the other cities in the world, have to come up with local solutions to their own problems in global standards.

Istanbul—and the economy of Turkey—is turning into a metropolis where construction and land rents lead the way. We are about to form a city with no memories and no past, and we are doing it without any large-scale plans by saying, “Big cities are designed by big projects.” Maybe we've already done it.

In this case it is not hard to guess how small a role the "green painting" actions―such as green roofs, solar energy, wind turbines, and partially cleaning the air―play, when these giant attacks are in motion.

Our proposal is to design a place that will reflect this crucial act. The raw material for this design is rubble, the construction itself. The purpose of this design is to be within the rubble, which we are usually observe from a distance, to form a place with every possible material that is left from a construction and to have the visitors rediscover where it came from, in a place created by it in the first place.

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A man is walking toward the building from the coast, through the storehouses and the car park. The sun is about to set. He smells the sea. He sees the silhouette stacked ahead of him. It doesn't ring a bell with him at all. There is light and people around it, followed by a dramatic music coming from somewhere inside. The stack reminds him of the reckless construction activity in Istanbul. There are people going in and coming out from indefinite paths. Some of them seem familiar. Their expressions all differ from each other. “Are these old junk or construction debris?” He barges in with curiosity. He stares at the framed sea view from a relatively dark room and gets carried away by his thoughts. One of the leaving visitors quietly whispers “freak” to the other…

Text submitted by Yalın Mimarlık