Memory Wall

The “Memory Wall” project approaches the repressed collective memory of Kültürpark from underground plane and aims to make memory visible again through a spatial excavation.
Located in the center of Izmir, Kültürpark has largely lost its impact on social memory due to the functional transformations it has undergone over the years. Once a venue for collective encounters and cultural interactions in the city, this area has gradually fallen silent; memories have been suppressed, and narratives pushed beneath the surface. This project invites the user on a metaphorical journey beneath the surface, where each step offers the opportunity to encounter the lost, connect with the past, and confront the forgotten.
This spatial construction structures the experience within a temporal flow. At the beginning of the process, the visitor encounters suppressed and forgotten narratives; the gaps in memory become visible for the first time here. As this encounter progresses, multi-layered relationships begin to form between individual experiences and collective memory. Thus, the space ceases to be merely an observed surface; it becomes an active component of participation, production, and transformation. In the later stages of the intervention, the space itself becomes a tool for reconstructing memory. The physical void revealed by the splitting of the wall represents both a spatial interruption and a discontinuity in collective memory. The structures suspended in this void point to the fragile yet resilient nature of memory, while preparing the ground for new connections between the past and the present.
The transparent masses suspended between the walls blur the boundary between the visible and the lost, transforming the space into a surface of testimony that serves both as a display and a questioning. Thanks to this permeability, memory is not only remembered but also transformed and reimagined. “Memory Wall” emerges as a surface that carries the traces of the past into the future, where the forgotten and the remembered intersect, and memory materializes and is reshaped.

The Memory Wall project, located beneath İzmir Kültürpark, covers a total underground area of 10,000 m². The project aims to bring urban memory back to the surface in an area where it has been physically suppressed by constructing it on a section of the existing Kültürpark underground parking lot. Through this intervention, the structure establishes a connection with the existing infrastructure while adding a new layer to the city's memory.

The design is shaped around two main concrete walls that form its structural backbone. These walls are positioned in reference to the column axes of the parking garage located at the -1 level. This ensures harmony with the existing structural system while also making a structural reference to the traces of the past.

The suspended glass masses between these two walls spatially represent the project's themes of memory and visibility. Due to their wide spans and transparency, these masses are supported by steel truss systems. The glass surfaces reflect the fragility of memory while creating permeable, light-filled voids within the darkness of the underground.

The structural system is designed as a hybrid structure combining concrete and steel. While the concrete walls connect to the ground, the steel structural systems lift the lightweight volumes off the ground and suspend them.

Designer: Elif Canan Abay
Supervisors: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ülkü İnceköse, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ebru Yılmaz, R.A. Ceren Ergüler