All That Is Solid

Istanbul, Turkey

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All That Is Solid

Istanbul, Turkey

Firm

PATTU Architecture & Design

Type

Cultural › Pavilion

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2015

SIZE

3000 sqft - 5000 sqft

BUDGET

$50K - 100K

The project was built for Young Architects Program (YAP) 2015 Istanbul, a joint program between MoMA PS1 and Istanbul Modern that gives emerging architectural practices the opportunity to build a temporary pavillion in the garden of Istanbul Modern.

The brief was to build a temporary structure that will provide shade and will house the YAP activities throughout the summer, but we wanted to adress a more urgent question about the future of the site.

The space around Istanbul Modern, including the museum was at a turning point: a huge development project was going to transform the area into a tourism hub. The approach of the developers is a familiar one that we see all over the world: demolition of the old. But this is not a new phenomenon, one can almost say it is systemic; even this small piece of land in the city has a long history of destruction and redefinition of its functions throughout the ages: from a monastery, to a factory, to a mall.

ALL THAT IS SOLID questions the approach that is taken to transform the port. We looked at it from two angles: first we question the solidity of architecture and how this relates to our memories, and secondly we look into the potential of temporariness.

Our design solution came from the research we did about the history of the site. We dismantled the space around Istanbul Modern with all its elements and previous constructions and reassembled them in a new way, showing the ephemeral side of architecture. The design borrows geometries from previous buildings and crashes them together in a chaotic way. But this chaos starts making sense over the course of a day as the transparent shapes become opaque by the heat and movement of the sun. This is achieved by a computer that constantly records light and temperature data on the structure and adjusts the position of the fins to provide shade. Past geometries become visible, and invisible by the movement of the fins. The space is a reminder of the past but also a statement about the future development of the area. It is a place of memory as well as a breeding ground for the ideas about its future.