Alumni Won Salacak Urban Design Competition, 3rd Honorable Mention Award

Alumni of Department of Architecture, İpek Üstündağ ve Yalçın Demircan were awarded with the 3rd Honorable Mention with their team at the Salacak Urban Design Competition, organized by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Department of Studies and Projects, as a free, national urban design competition.
The competition aimed design Salacak coast within the given limits, located in the Aziz Mahmut Hüdayi, Salacak and Selimiye neighborhoods of the Üsküdar district of Istanbul.

We would like to congratulate our alumni and their colleagues.

Design Team:
Ece Avcı – ITU Architecture,
Bahadır Kantarcı – Gedik University Architecture,
İpek Üstündağ – Kadir Has University Architecture,
Yalçın Demircan – Kadir Has University Architecture,
Sevgi Aslan – ITU Landscape Architecture

ARCHITECTURAL REPORT

The unique silhouette of the historical peninsula is not just a view for Üsküdar. It has very deep memories. Salacak coast has witnessed many things; wars, conquest, enthusiasm, sadness… They all have weight on it. It has the responsibility of being across the historical peninsula. There is a desire to tell what it has seen, with the tidy of being greeted … With this responsibility, Salacak becomes a cruise route.

Reunion Route: It seemed that the route that stretched from Üsküdar Square to the Maiden’s Tower had a desire to continue without curving to the rest of the coast. While the Reunion Route aims to respond to this request, it remembers both the desire to approach and the beauty of looking from afar. When it approaches the end of the route, it leaves you alone with the sea on the right, the sea on the left, and the Maiden’s Tower, as if there was nothing around. While the staging along the pier functions as a viewing space, the boats departing from the end of the route wait to reach the Maiden’s Tower.

Tidal Theater: In the background where the scenery reveals the whole history, the amphitheater creates itself by watching the scene in which the waves come and go in a hurry as if they were carrying news from Sultanahmet and Hagia Sophia. It creates a social composition with the commercial unit filling the lower part and the city pool right next to it. It becomes a part of new unforeseen scenarios. It produces encounter tactics in the flow of time. It becomes a meeting place for different groups, and welcomes those who socialize with their loneliness against the serenity of the sea.

Urban Pools: In the 1800s, Istanbul residents used sea baths to cool off on hot summer days. These baths consisted of a pier surrounding a part of the sea, closed spaces on a part of the pier and a pool in the middle. Today, scattered, unsafe and uncommunicative sea use on Salacak coastal line supports the creation of urban pools for public sea use. It offers areas where the city opens to water and integrates both physically and conceptually. It is aimed that the pools that take the sea inside become places of memory by referring to the old Istanbul baths.

Fishermen’s Shelter and Sharing Amphitheater: Fishing shelters are both business and socializing places for fishermen. A sharing amphitheater that integrates with the fishermen’s shelter, which will create public common spaces for the shelter, which is not possible for the inhabitants to be involved in its present form, and which will increase the interaction between the sea, people and fishermen has been proposed. The new fishermen’s shelter offers the fishermen who spend almost all their days there the opportunity to mingle with the public and share their stories, while making it possible for the visitors to be a part of the lives of the fishermen while eating their fish breads in the amphitheater.

Bio-Habitat: The continuous green corridor designed throughout the coastline creates a new route on the sea in order to make the coast accessible and perceptible to all types of users. The new platform added to the circulation system aims to support the ecological integrity of the city. Creating a new space for the birds in the region, the place also allows people on the Salacak coast to spend time watching Salacak, cliffs and birds over the sea.