This milieu is for exchanging and disseminating thoughts in the context of 'Urban Representation: Remapping Istanbul' course given by Ipek Yada Akpinar, Banu Tomruk, Evren Aysev and Burcu Yiğit Turan at ITU Bu platform, İTÜ'de İpek Yada Akpınar, Banu Tomruk, Evren Aysev ve Burcu Yiğit Turan tarafından yürütülen 'Urban Representation: Remapping Istanbul' dersinin, düşünce alış-verişi ve yayımı için bir ortamdır.
Friday, 24 December 2010
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
Saturday, 11 December 2010
Sunday, 5 December 2010
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Neighborhood Mapping
patrick franke mapping 3 + revised mapping 1
revised mapping 1
the revised mapping adds a layer of clarification and notation. major additions to the mapping include delineation of the route of travel (and deviation from the route) as well as start and end points. the mapping attempts to be expressive of the neighborhood's qualities of topography, movement, height, verticality, and flexibility.
mapping 3
mapping 3 seeks to examine the museum building as a container of history. this unique space is then distinctly different from its surroundings. the mapping is an understanding of the difference between time moving inside the museum and outside it.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Thursday, 18 November 2010
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Monday, 8 November 2010
mental-mapping of metro-line
Sunday, 7 November 2010
The "gravitation-centre" of Istanbul
The Center of Istanbul
This Mapping is showing the „Gravitation“-Citycentre of Istanbul, according to the population of the districts and there position. The positions of the districts are also points. In this calculation the whole population of a district is in one point, which also can be seen as the gravitation centre of the district. So the question is: where is the emphasis of Istanbul?
To answer this question, a not really difficult calculation must be done. You need a city map for tracking the districts into a xy-coordinate-system and the populations – the masses of the gravitation. After that, a really interesting answer occurred:
The (gravitation) Center of Istanbul is in Fatih, near the golden Horn - a little bit West of Atatürk Boulevard
This is interesting, because it looks like the gravitation-centre hasn’t changed a lot since the last 2000 years, although developments of the last decades have changed the urban structure of Istanbul a lot.
There are also weaknesses in the model. The location of the district-gravitation-points where found by estimation. For the bigger districts the points are less exact, but these districts have also less population. The bigger remaining question is how the population of Istanbul really distributed, because the Statistics which are used are just showing the official population.(circa 13 mill.)
This kind of mapping is a statistical tool to give an overview of the spatial distribution of a population. Often it is interesting to map the change of this population-emphasis. For example the map below is showing the population-gravity-point (Bevölkerungsschwerpunkt) in the history of the United States. It is a constant drift towards the south-west.
Mental (visual) mapping of Istanbul and my neighbourhood
In the first mapping I wanted to keep it as simple and abstract as possible. I wanted to explore how less it’s possible to reduce the content of visual communication = mapping. Of course it’s possible to add more information, but for the question, where my neighbourhood is circa located it is enough. I believe, in a way, this is also how our/mine mind works, when we/I want to get orientation in a city. For human beings there is an deep demand to get an sudden simple orientation. If we can’t get this orientation we sometimes feel uncomfortable or insecure, or in another way: we are used to make our one mental mapping, ourself reference topology in short time.
The second image is a mental mapping of my neighbourhood. In fact it is just the street i’m living, because this street is like an important axis for my mental reference in Istanbul. It connects the Bosporus at Findikli with the Taksim Square. Not that this is the only street I know in Istanbul, but it’s like a milestone in my mental-mapping of the city. The different directions from there are mentioned by the different places like “Besiktas, “Talabasi”, …
In my personal mapping there are a lot of shops and other kind of consume related establishments. In the area there are not so many landmarks, so i orientate myself mostly by streetlevel establishments.
Maybe more interesting are the things I don’t mention in my mapping. For example a church or a carpark. Also the fact that i am an foreign student in the city, who doesn’t know the people in the street is important. For example i didn’t mention person-related things like “Ali’s house”, “place of the old mans” etc.
I also wanted to mention, that we all have learned to orientate in urban spaces. Maybe like human beings in the past, who orientated themselves through forest and nature, we also have to find ways to orientate. For example mapping tools like the open source Google systems are playing an important role at the moment.
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Monday, 1 November 2010
Obstruction_ Closing the quarter of Tarlabaşı
Thursday, 28 October 2010
coast line obstruction
this map indicates the coast line freedom of public usage from inonu stadium to ortakoy. the red areas are the only spaces that the public is allowed to use the coast and the blue coast line is unfortunately obstructed to the public usage by the commercial, historical and official institutions like hotels, palaces, universities and government places.
it is hard to perceive that in istanbul, sadly the most central coast lines' destiny is like this.
mustafa.
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
surveillance map
This map is an attempt to visualize a pedestrians monitorability on Halaskargazi and Cumhuriyet Avenues.
As we all know, there are lots of surveillance cameras around the city, monitoring the public space 24 hours a day, 7 days a week... The graphic shows the proportions of distances, where someone can sit on a computer and watch someone else walking on the street, through "mobile electronic system integration" web site.
In this example i chose my daily route between home, school and work.
Saturday, 23 October 2010
Compound to Compound
Here a new housing development (Mashattan) is walled off from the rest of the city. The wealthy residents live in 9 identical towers and have their own private world complete with shops and recreational facilities.
They must use their cars to go anywhere. Many of the streets in the area don't even have sidewalks, even though they were recently built.
From the housing compound the residents leave thru a guarded entrance and enter walled in streets. These cars enter endless highways and pull into a gated office complex.
The public space is walled off and the spaces that people should be meeting and interacting are now reserved for cars. Public space is secondary and non-existent. The use of guarded entrance shows that the public space is less desirable and perhaps dangerous, when compared to the friendly confines of the various complexes.
A vicious cycle: The public spaces are neglected in favor of pristine private worlds. This neglect causes the public spaces to lose their appeal and people’s desire to be there. The lack of life gives a feeling of danger and people no longer want to be in the spaces. They continue to wall themselves in more and more in every aspect of their lives (work, living, playing, etc.) until the only time people use public space in these new cities is for transport between compounds.
My mapping is currently not loading for some reason. Will continue to try.
Friday, 22 October 2010
Human Obstructions to Public Walkways
I chose to map the human obstructions along my walk at three times during the day. These obstructions include all of the various street vendors and people who intrude on the public sidewalks. In my mapping I mark the various spots that these vendors set up shop throughout the course of the day. Their use of the public sidewalk causes mini traffic jams amongst the pedestrians walking and causes what could be a direct path from point A-B to become a winding journey in, around, through, and over these various street salespeople.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
tophane + disconnection from the bosphorus
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
nonaccessible urban area (Kadıkoy)
instances of obstruction-trees on the istiklal avenue
The arrangement of the walking routes on Istiklal Avenue altered rapidly in the past 30 years. The avenue was divided by the cars until early 1980s. The pedestrian and car circulation used to dominate the rhythm of the avenue. The first shift appeared with the pedestrianization of the avenue. By the 1990s the avenue was organized along the tram road with the help of the different paving patterns and the row of trees which gave the avenue a harmonious order of rhythm; the users strolling on the avenue were using both sides of the trees while the ones who were in a hurry were using the tramline as a fast track, intersecting with the tram from time to time. The trees on the avenue are removed in 2006 and the paving changed into a monotype. Today the avenue doesn't have its harmonious order system but instead it has a monotonous rhythm of mass of people.
It is not the existence of the trees but their lack which causes an obstruction in the public space.
Sunday, 17 October 2010
Saturday, 16 October 2010
Sulan Kolatani_influence (an example)
Sulan Kolatani (architect) did some research with his students in 1993, which consisted of making a walk between Haliç, Tünel, Karaköy, Kuledibi areas and filming the daily density of activities. This is I think, a map of directions of densities through many transportation methods, focused on these areas, and from his and his students' viewpoint.