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The challenge of conflict-affected cities: Building peace through architecture and urban design
This paper was presented and published in International Studies Association Annual Convention, At Atlanta, USA, Volume: 57.
The goal of this paper is to show that architecture and urban design should be considered part of peacebuilding efforts aimed at helping find long-term sustainable solutions to conflict by fostering ownership, cohesion, and inclusion. The paper argues that recent developments in the field of peacebuilding and development, and particularly the adoption of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, which have the motto “No one should be left behind,” make a strong case for addressing the spatial, specifically urban needs of people living in cities inside conflict-affected countries. It goes on to point to policy gaps and to the practical challenges involved in devising urban solutions for cities in conflict. Finally, the paper claims that finding creative and innovative ways to
prioritize sustainability in conflict-affected cities is not only possible, but a necessary part of addressing conflict. Our arguments are supported by examples from the field, focused specifically on the case of Kabul.
Read here.
Simulating Visibility in Small Public Spaces
This is a paper is presented and published in 2016 Design Communication European Conference.
The paper presents a natural surveillance analysis method for the design of open public spaces, in a digital, 3D modelling environment. Utilising a ray casting method, the model facilitates the computation of varying natural surveillance levels of an open public space during the day. As agents of surveillance, the model takes into account, the occupants of the surrounding buildings and the passers by using the main pedestrian routes; and as objects of surveillance, the pedestrians spending time in the analysed space. Facade openings and visible obstructions are considered the main static variables. The use is demonstrated through a case study on a public plaza, by computing changing visibility conditions throughout the course of a day, based on varying activity levels of surrounding buildings and pedestrian paths. Potential benefits are discussed. It is suggested but not investigated in this paper that considering the visibility of an urban space during its design can help increase the safety and comfort of its users.
Read it here.
Sustainability Curriculum in Architectural Education
A research that we have done in 2011 explored the sustainability in architectural curriculum in all 15 universities (at the time) in Istanbul that teach architecture. The study compares the academic programmes, faculty relations, number of the available courses related to sustainability, how these courses are distributed throughout the education process. The paper was first published in Ekoyapı Magazine in May 2011, and later presented in Integration of Architectural Education Symposium in October 2011, in Istanbul.
In collaboration with Ozlem Bahadır Kul.
Read the article here.
Location mining in Kadıköy
Location Kadıköy, Istanbul as pilot
Year 2017
Job description Research and method development for location-mining
Status Ongoing
Location mining research is an ongoing method finding study that we have started in March 2017. The project aims for finding free data resources in the urban scale and develop methods to scrape the data, map it and create visual statistical analyses.
The maps are using data retrieved from sahibinden.com (a website for classifieds, similar to Craigslist or Gumtree), yemeksepeti.com (a website for ordering food), iett.istanbul (Istanbul’s official public transportation website), Instagram, Trafi, Google Maps, tripadvisor.com. The common feature for these data sources is that their content is mainly provided by its users, in other words they are all volunteered geographic information. This feature was the basis and originating point for the entire research: Currently, we are swimming in a large pool of data streaming all around us. The tweets, selfies, check-ins, likes, ignores, pokes, snaps, listings, stars, user comments constantly keep updating and adding to this pool. Mostly consisting of unorganised, unfiltered and uncategorised raw data; this pool is the ultimate collective subconscious of our society. It has the information on what people like doing where, when, how; how they travel; how they spend their free time; how they speak to each other; what their share of economy is; how they take what was created and transformed them.
This is a fantastic information source for anyone wanting to understand the geospatial past, current and future in further detail.
The perplexing question is that, why don’t we, architects, some of the ultimate social life manipulators, use this information when shaping our designs? After all, sustainability is about creating self-sufficient environments so that consuming additional resources will not be needed; and what can be more self-sufficient than what the user actually want and need?
Below can be seen several maps of Kadıköy district of Istanbul, created by our own custom-made Phython and Rhino/Grasshopper scripts.
1. Public transportation routes of bus and metrobus lines (iett.istanbul); 2. Minibus and dolmus lines (Trafi app); and 3. Routes for running and bike rides (Strava Labs)
1. Unit prices for rental houses (from the ads that were online between December 2016 to April 2017); 2. Unit prices for houses for sale; and 3. Payback time, interpolated from the unit prices
Ages of the buildings. Navy dots represent newer buildings built in the last three years and purple ones represent buildings older than 30 years.
The number of bedrooms. Notice how smaller houses correspond with the newly built ones, as seen in the previous maps.
1. Instagram posts with their likes, showing the social life axis; 2. The residential/non-residential areas, black means the building is fully non-residential and white means fully residential (from GIS model)
Instagram posts and their likes. Orange circles grow larger as the posts get more likes. Black dots represent the cafe and restaurants taken from Google Maps.
Hashtag map. Most popular hashtags are listed in each respective virtual grid. The orange grids represent where hashtags are mostly related to sports and workout, while purple grids have mostly make-up and hair hashtags.
Ayran and Coca Cola prices, from the menus in yemeksepeti.com. The prices range from 1 TRY to 8 TRY for ayran and 2 TRY to 8.5 TRY for Coke. 1 TRY is roughly 0,24 Euro.
The restuarants serving take-away food at night. Each circle with different colour represent the time period that the restaurant is still open for online ordering. From yemeksepeti.com.
The residential/non-residential areas. Black means the building is fully non-residential and white means fully residential. From the GIS model.
Bus and metrobus lines, and their stops. The thicker lines mean that the bus line following that route has more service in a day. The darker the lines get means more bus lines overlap in that route. The larger the circles get means more lines stops there. From iett.istanbul.
Minibus and dolmus routes. From Trafi.
Running and bike ride routes. From Strava Labs.
Accessibility to public transportation. The blacker the buildings get, more public transportation seats the person can access within walking distance. Calculated using the bus, metro, metrobus, train and tram lines’ daily capacities.
Accessibility to green areas. The blacker the buildings get, more green areas/parks are accessible to the person within walking distance.
Unit price for rental houses. The larger the circle gets, the higher rent/sqm gets. From sahibinden.com.
Unit price for houses for sale. The larger the circle gets, the higher sales price/sqm gets. From sahibinden.com.
The number of bedrooms for each rental house. From sahibinden.com.
The number of bedrooms for each house for sale. From sahibinden.com.
Payback times, if you buy a house and rent it afterwards to compensate for you initial investment. Calculated based on the two previous maps.
Ages of the buildings. From sahibinden.com.
ATMs and banks. From Google Maps.
Shopping for women’s clothing, and Starbucks locations. From Google Maps.
The mosques and their walkability. Voronoi cells change their colours according the the number of mosques vs. walkable distance.
Sakarya Railway Station
Location Sakarya, Turkey
Year 2017
Client Kivi Strategical Planning
Job description Preparation of all bidding-related documents; including an extensive book containing several pre-design analyses and research, a 3D model of the project site and detailed CAD drawing
Area 277 ha
Status Completed
Sakarya, a city that is in the neighbourhood of Istanbul, The current railway station is at the heart of the city and the Municipality has plans on redeveloping the station’s vicinity while re-designing and re-purposing the existing station building and building a new one in another place.
The analysis book was developed for Kivi Strategic Planning, the company that undertook the bidding process. Eight architectural and urban design offices in Turkey were selected to develop proposals, and the preliminary analyses were developed for them.
Sakarya and its hinterland.
The master planning area (grey) together with the new building to be designed (white dots)
Images from the site
1. Orange dots represent the cafes and restaurants, showing where the social activities accumulate. From Google Maps. 2. Purple dots represent the rental houses, radiuses growing larger with the unit prices. From sahibinden.com. 3. Pink lines represent the bus routes, and the darker the lines are mean more bus lines go through the route. From sakus.sakarya.bel.tr. Static images are in the book.
1. Important areas and streets in the project site. 2. The protection status of existing buildings. 3. The transportation network in the area. 4 and 5. The project’s implementation phases. Static images are in the book.
Cukurova International Airport Roof Design Decision Support
Location Adana, Turkey
Year 2016
Client Emre Arolat Architects
Job description Sustainable design consultancy: Decision making support for the green roof design, including the position and ratio of openings and design of lightwells. The work is done through use of custom-made evolutionary algorithms and several building physics simulation tools.
Function Airport building
Status Building under construction
Research presented in CAAD Futures 2017. Read here.
The perforation of the roof shell structure that accommodates the hotel, car park and two terminal masses were optimized according to their relation to sun. The project area is located in a very hot climate, therefore it was aimed to minimize the summer radiation while allowing as much winter sun as possible. Meanwhile, daylight was controlled for different functions (offices, waiting areas, car parks, transient spaces, commercial areas, etc.) to make sure glare was prevented and sufficient daylight levels were provided.
By manipulating the openings within a 16 x 16 m grid, different levels of porosity have been achieved and this variable composition is used to control the amount of sun allowed inside. To achieve required resolution of perforations, a variable grid of 1sqm. With multiple opening levels has been developed.
A grading scale for the ray falling over the interior surfaces at specific times have been developed to asses the efficiency of opening conditions. The harsh climate of Çukurova differs greatly though out the year. It has been crucial to provide direct sunlight in winter while blocking for the most part in summer.
A custom Python grid written within the Grasshopper environment of Rhino has been used to construct the geometry and Octopus –a genetic solver– has been used for optimization purposes while Honeybee plug-in provided the basic environmental and seasonal data. The optimization was run in multi-dimensions to control and assess the lighting conditions to opening percentages to light falling on the greenery.
The project has been presented in Bilgi Üniversity MSTAS2016 (Computational Technologies in Architectural Design Symposium) and CAADFutures conference series. For detailed information about the project, please follow the link to download the paper.
A detailed climate analysis, based on the data obtained from the nearest meteorological station.
Image showing the main terminal mass and VIP/CIP mass.
Functional zoning for both building complexes.
Concrete modules given by the designer. The green roof above the terminals and hotel building was to be designed using only these four modules.
Basecase studies in order to understand which parts of the roof should be opened in order to provide daylight and sunlight within the desired range, in desired space.
Basecase simulations (without the roof) were run for each floor level, for different periods of the year in order to understand the effect of the buildings on each other. The simulation results, in addition to mapping the functions level by level, resulted in zoning the buildings. The code was run for each zone separately.
Initial runs for solar radiation, generated roof pattern and control simulation. This procedure was carried out for all zones of the roof. In addition to solar radiation levels, natural daylight levels were also simulated.
Comparative simulations for CIP/VIP buildings, for basecase and two alternative roof patterns.
Light-well alternatives for the carpark roof. The light wells were designed in order to allow maximum daylight while considering overheating and prevent rain.
Controlling the daylight levels in section.
Bornova Municipality City Hall: Climatic Analyses
Location Izmir, Turkey
Year 2015
Client Ozan Onder Ozener, Deniz Aslan
Job description Climatic analyses
Function Public building
Status National two-stage competition, 2nd place
See more arkitera.com
Bornova, an Izmir district, has a hot and humid climate. The challenge for this project was to deal with the climatic constraints in an office building with high internal heat gains in addition to high solar gains; since the architects requested a glass façade throughout the mass. Furthermore, the project area constituted another problem, that the buildable area was at the north edge of the whole site, leaving the south part for the requested urban square, eliminating the potential for providing shaded areas in the square, using the building itself.
In order to deal with mentioned issues, the building was designed to have an atrium that separates the thin south portion while the offices can be placed in the larger mass, without a direct south facing façade. This south portion is used for public functions, and serve as a vertical continuation of the square. This allows for a free-running volume, and limit the conditioning to only the office areas.
There is a water body on the ground floor, reaching to the building entrance, connected to the atrium. This allows for evaporative cooling inside the building. The positioning of the pool was made through CFD analyses, to ensure that while the wind was effectively carrying the evaporation towards the atrium in summer, the area was not affected by the wind in winter.
Sunpath diagrams showing the difficult orientation of the square: The buildable area is the north portion of the project site, leaving the south for public square and cancelling the potential of creating a self-shaded open area.
Massing strategy to deal with south facing functions and square. An atrium separates the thin south portion while the offices can be placed in the larger mass, without a direct south facing façade. This south portion is used for public functions, and serve as a continuation of the square. This allows for a free-running volume, and limit the conditioning to only the office areas.
Final simulations to control the proposed strategies: Natural daylight levels in office areas and CFD simulations for summer and winter scenarios to test the placement of pool reaching inside the building’s atrium.
3D images.