Author: OPENACT Architecture Team: Zuhal Kol, Carlos Zarco Sanz, Meliz Akyol, Zeynep Küheylan, Ozan Şen, Rana Imam, Berna Yaylali, Gizem Aluçlu, Zehra Saday Aygün. Type: Restricted Urban Design Competition Client: IBB Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Location: Istanbul, Turkey Status: Second Award Period: April 2020 Establishing a design proposal based on the interpretations of multi-layered cartographic analyses, the research discovers that the main urban framework/ spatial organization of “street-gate-pier/port” structure not only still legible within the contemporary urban fabric but also, is the main operational infrastructure in which all layers of Haliç (transportation, ecological, urban memory or land use) are integrally converged. The streets leading to the old gates or piers are still the main embolos embodying the dynamic life of the city; and they still are the main channels conveying the rainwater as well as the winds of Istanbul. However, the surgical interventions of the 20th century industrialization detached and segregated the coastal portion of this spatial organization leaving an undefined, disconnected and fragmented shoreline fabric. Unearthing the neglected urban morphology of this Byzantine later Ottoman port city, the design proposal repairs and reactivates the “street-gate-pier/port” framework to induce possible scenarios formed on/around Haliç that foster the connection of the land and water; enhance the conversation between natural and human spheres; attempt to recover and recuperate its water ecologies; and probe the impact of climate change as well as the water level change at the intersection of socio-ecological, socio-cultural, socio-political and socio-spatial encounters of the 21st century. Aiming to restore and reactivate the water-land connection of Haliç, the design reproduces this characteristic spatial mechanism of " street-gate-pier/port " and strategically converts it into an open and participatory framework at the intersection of the individual and the collective; a dynamic, adaptive and reactive spatial system that operates through organization, legibility and directionality while allowing utmost flexibility for spontaneous, self-generated experiences emerged through the conversations of water and city. While inland eco-corridors of this framework revitalizes the embolos to devise connections from the inland to the sea, and from the sea towards the inland, the infrastructural re-creation corridor generates a coastal spine uniting all inland arteries. And lastly, uniting all layers of the framework for evolutionary development of Haliç with the city, digital interface corridor as an augmented environment of user interaction and data is designed to encourage citizen engagement and improvisation to amplify the experience of participatory public life.