Design Team: Elmira Jafari, Erfan Farahmand, Ahmad Moradian

Location: Istanbul, Turkey

Competition Organizer: Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality

Status: Competition, Honorable Mention Prize Winner

Year: 2020

Organized by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, it was a two-stage international competition with 146 submitted proposals. As the modern heart of Istanbul and the most significant public space of the city, Takism is a remnant of historical layers of construction, demolition, and reconstruction over a century.

To create an inclusive and democratic public space, our proposal "[Un]Beating Heart of Istanbul" places people at the centre of design strategies. The synergy between Gezi park and Taksim square is a key strategy to unlock the potentials of the site, creating a people-friendly public space.

Taksim square is a space of flows, intersection, expression, and confrontation. It is a modern city centre with multi-faceted, multi-layered, and multiscale characters. Taksim is a place for social, cultural, and political confrontations. As a place for social participation, Taksim has always hosted a diversity of social, economic, ethnic, gender and age groups. 

TAKSIM ACTIVATED THROUGH PARK-SQUARE SYNERGY
Provoking the synergy between the park and the square, is the key strategy to unlock the potentials of the site. On the one hand, the square as the climax of urban pedestrian flows enjoys the constant presence of citizens; while as an urban void, it greatly lacks people-friendly and climatic comfort aspects of a civic space. On the other hand, the park as the gem of green space of the city fabric lacks the public quality and diversity of urban activities. The green quality of Gezi park creates a setting for informal activities adjacent to more formal quality of the square. Therefore, the integration of these two urban typologies can improve their coexistence as a pilot ecological urban space.