Project
Atakan Oğuz
Organised Randomness
Istanbul, Turkey
Streets with (new) meaning
Ways of living, ways of sharing
Rethinking processes and governance
Image: Atakan Oğuz
The project aims to create a neighboorhood, which seemingly created itself through many back and forths and in many years, unique at every corner.

The project focuses on rehabilitation of an existing neighbourhood consisting of a main shopping street and family houses, which appears to be created itself seemingly without any foreplanning, thus resulted in a cluster of buildings, struggling to communicate with each other and create an enviroment in which the inhabitants and visitors can roam freely.
While it's obvious that lack of planning and the chaotic randomness is to blame for this situation, the project also considers the potential of randomness as a tool for uniqueness and sincerity. İnstead of a planning phase which uses strict guidelines, rules and regular housing typologies, the project aims to keep the randomness aspect of the place, meanwhile guiding that randomness to create a rich enviroment which not only offers one of a kind dwellings but also a place that offers a different perspective from every other corner.
Different types of houses interlocking with each other aims to attract citizens with different social backgrounds and create a socially diverse neighbourhood, in which people ranging from single students to families of 5 can coexsist in a balance of privacy and open communal living with enough open spaces, balconies and gardens for all to enjoy.
İn the end the main goal of the project could be described as creating a neighbourhood almost from scratch, which seems to have created itself over many years and instead of offering its inhabitants a repetition of a carefully designed house plan for the sake of equality and optimization of planning/construction phases, it offers a place of diversity, a sincere place where the borders between private and common are not as obvious but also not nonexistent.

Impact

The project can be seen as a reconsideration of both the way we look at built enviroment and the way we plan dwellings in general. The rejection of repetition, modularity and the strict laws, that gives shape to a place even before an architect is involved (the laws of private property, fixed distances between individual private buildings, etc.) signals a different appoach to architectural and urban design. It offers a slower process of planning and construction, one that tries to mimic how we used to build our communities centuries ago, before when everything was regulated to fit in a predefined template. It cherishes the chaotic nature of randomness and uniquesness while drawing a frame for it, giving it a goal and setting some parameters. It acknowledges Architecture foremost as the most responsible and unavoidable form of art, which has the heavy duty of creating habitable enviroments, ones that appeal to all our senses and situmulates our cognitive functions.

Axonometric drawings and floorplans showing the relation between different dwellings and how they come together.

Illustrations showcasing the different passages and common areas.

Illustrations showcasing the commercial street, restaurants and cafes.

Atakan Oğuz

The project was designed as a student project as part of the Architectural studio-3 under the guidence of Doctorate Assisstant Aziz Rıdvan Kutlutan in Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.

Student
Turkey