Palimpsest Network

Located on the Historical Peninsula of Istanbul, the site is surrounded by commercial and touristic areas, as well as at the intersection of important transportation routes. This situation creates a place where there are many stimuli such as sounds, smells, and crowds. By using different phases of water, the design tries to create spaces such as baths and steam rooms, which take references from the Byzantine and Ottoman, where the individual can be isolated in this dense environment. In addition to spaces such as the bath and steam room, the design, which works as the centre of a network, ensures that water is collected and purified thanks to its towers. While functioning as a source, it creates an ongoing cycle within itself. The aim is understand the working principles and connectivity of water network over reimagining machine aesthetics. Reading and observing the city as a machine by water structures. Lykos River (Bayrampasa Deresi), which passes through the middle of the Historical Peninsula, is not an efficient water source. Occupied volume, location and function of the structures changes the urban texture. It also shows the historical background and period of time with structural, architectural changes the function and necessity under the roman and ottoman empire. The work helps to examine their basic machine structure and architectural designs to recreate and inspirational potential for todays atmosphere.
The density of housing is high in the 3rd intervention area located in the north of the historical peninsula. Despite this density, the open public spaces in the environment area is insufficient in terms of quality and quantity. Therefore, the intervention is about transforming the space into a usable public space. A system was established in the intervention area by the coming together of 6 different units. A space based on experience has been created that allows water to harvest and interact with people in different phases.

The design constructs the water purification process vertically and turns it into a tower. The process, which is carried into the city thanks to the towers, draws attention to water, which is one of the most important problems of our time, and ensures that the process is visible to people. Aqueducts used for bringing water to the city from the transmission line and fountains for its distribution. Open and close cisterns of different sizes were built in Istanbul for the storage, resting and distribution of water in a thousand-year period.
Grey and clean towers provide the circulation of the water in the network. The grey tower is a technical structure that emerged with the story of the treatment process of the water. The clean water tower unit is designed to be a public space where citizens can experience the process of the water cycle while the tower works as a centre clean water tank of the network.