JAMES ve DEV ŞEFTALİ | STUDYO 5 2010-2011 / JAMES and THE GIANT PEACH

PARAMETRIC SYNTHESIS Istanbul 2010 Workshop

Parametric Synthesis Istanbul 2010

This project proposes an investigation on how habitation and the pedestrian movement are interfering withthe urban fabric that starts from particular points and spreads out following its own growth rules. At thesame time the growth is influenced by the city, and it ends up infecting the city itself. The aim is to create anetwork of small-scale spaces that would reactivate the link of the citizens to the public space.

The participants will suggest design interventions focusing on the transitional parts of the urban fabric,observing the reaction caused by the placement of their proposed “prototypes” in different positions /situations of the area under investigation. Is there any significant change in the fabric around the installations caused by their existence?

The area chosen is the Golden Horn or Haliç in Turkish, a horn-shaped fiord on the European side of Istanbul and is fed by two small streams. Various developments have been undertaken in this area in the direction of improving and renewing it, such as the conversion of existing historical buildings to museums (eg. Rahmi Koc Museum), libraries, educational institutions, zones for people to interact and socialize such as parks. The potential danger of this transformation is the urban gentrification, which happens during the physical renovation of central and historical areas resulting in the displacement of the existing social class and the occupation of the area by another, usually higher, urban class. Therefore, this project aims to create patterns that would deal with urban gentrification in an efficient way, achieving to maintain anduse the existing structure at the same time as improving it by merging the new and old residences of the area. Parametric Associative Design is an appropriate tool to translate social, spatial, location and time contexts into form and structure. This will give the opportunity to deal with the complexity of notions forming today’s urban cityscape in a more precise and efficient way. In terms of methodology, a first step could be a research on performances and their associations existing in the area, in order to develop the vocabulary of qualities which will then evolve into spatial parameters. This way the design groups will maintain infinite design flexibility and at the same time provide realistic solutions answering to site specific problems. Some examples of such qualities and associations could be Open-air/Sheltered, Big/Small, Horizontal/Vertical, Permeable/Solid, Enclosed/Communicative etc. responding respectively to the shape, size, position, texture or performative aspects of the space. In terms of software the main focus of the workshop will be to operate with McNeel’s Grasshopper plug-in

for Rhinoceros 4. Described as a “generative modeling for Rhino”, Grasshopper is a design environment suited for the explorations throughout the workshop. During the first days of the workshop, there will be an intensive learning course of Grasshopper. The resulting designed product will be fabricated and exposed on site.