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REGENERATING CITY GRADUATION PROJECT
WHAT WENT WRONG?
Architecture starts with undertanding situations that leads to destruction. Understanding what went wrong, will give designers to power of creating something that should have been done at the fist place. Understanding urban transformation of Fikirtepe is mainly about examining and questioning methods of modifying. Transformation of Fikirtepe has started with good and innocent intentions. But with the blink of an eye destructions and evictions started. This so called urban renewal was sudden, topdown. Environmental protection didn’t taken into consideration as well as renters role in this occasion. It contiuned more like economical developmetn and politicalporedominance was unchallanged. New contructions didn’t only interrupt entire life routine, they increased infrastructural problems, gentrification and otherization that was already there in the city’s fabric instead of trying to solve these problems. But how did architecture become a failure in this process?
QUESTION: IS NEWER ALWAYS NECESSARY?
Tranformation in Fikirtepe requires demolish and build process. That brings out the question in title. In the most pragmatist thinking, this process will cost more than doing necessary research about infrastructural problems. New contructions does not guarantee to harmonise with district’s fabric. There are no projects regarding district’s general condition. So, can smaller and smarter interventions be better than building everything from zero? In this context, proposel should be about demolishing unsafe and unhabitable buildings and designing new volumes while observing what lies in the original forms. What works in the original fabric, should work with the new constructions too.