Author: OPENACT Architecture Team: Zuhal Kol, Carlos Zarco Sanz, Jose Luis Hidalgo. Type: Competition Location: Istanbul, Turkey Status: Honorable Mention Period: July 2013 Nomad Pier: Waterfront Community Centers for Migrants in Istanbul Standing on the conflux and being a global node where people, cultures and goods converge, Istanbul has become a land of intersections for several thousand years as a global ‘hinge’ city that connects civilizations and continents. From a distance, Istanbul is the immutable intersection of vast and diverse mobilities. It reaches across the East-West and the North-South axes of the world, and all their possible variants. Out of these histories of intersections comes the need to develop specific capabilities for handling and enhancing network functions; it is not simply a question of location at intersections. It seems that developing such capabilities across diverse histories and geographies is particularity a feature of Istanbul’s deep history. In time the city has developed itself from a city of passersby to a city of migration, and been able to inhabit many different cultures and create new cultures out of their synergies. On the other hand while the global economic networks and capital flows have generated many layers on the urban topography during its history, the flow of people has carried new skills, change and culture of plurality into the city. People who are migrating to Istanbul or migrating within Istanbul have articulated themselves on the constantly transforming layer of global and local intersections, and improved the ‘urbanness’ of Istanbul. All these movements and encounters have shaped the unique geopolitics and culture of Istanbul, and this culture has been continuing transforming as the water in between two continents continues the flux of actions, connects and merges changes. Although, today’s Istanbul faces migration based socio-cultural problems due to the failure of global economic networks to interconnect with the socio-geographic features of the city, Istanbul has the potential to bring up solutions in its history, sociologic formation, topography and ecology. One of the most obvious of Istanbul’s unique features is its geography. Topography is the strongest factor in Istanbul differentiating it from other global megacities. Steep hills, valleys, and the sinuous curves of the Bosporus dramatically shape the city’s urban pattern: its settlements and transport and even the ecology of the city. In Istanbul, the terrain creates the notion of orientation, almost inscribing a mental map of the city in the minds of its residents. Living in Istanbul one is constantly aware of water, a presence always in close proximity or just within view. One knows that the slopes of the valleys lead to the Bosporus or the Golden Horn. It is this presence of water straits and the city’s rising topography which makes the scene an omnipresent feature in the everyday life of Istanbul’s citizens, an urban feature accessible by the majority without any social or economic class differentiation. And it is not a single scene but a collection of scenes from numerous vistas thanks to the dynamic topography of the city. The ability to experience the city with the visual senses creates an awareness of the whole, as if the whole city were an enormous stage or collection of screens. Istanbul is not just a waterfront city; it is a city on water. Water had been always dominant in Istanbul’s life by being a defense element, a way for trade, a means of transportation, a source for industrial activities and a recreational element. Ports and piers were acting as encounter and interaction points, arrival nodes for migrants and a sign to realize being in Istanbul. The project “Nomad Pier” aims to benefit the potentials of water as an urban integration tool, welcome and embrace the immigration to Istanbul, create a network of community centers all around Istanbul waterfront to reach out as many as immigrant and multiply the number of intersections, activities, reproductions through the common object of Istanbul: water. Path Unlike the urban space proposals in western sources, in Istanbul the public space is nourished by the movement and happens on the flow rather than in a static place of accumulation. That is why the project creates a flow towards the urban integration element of the city, to the water by forming paths towards the sea. These paths are actually the extensions of the streets -the vital public spaces in Istanbul- to the sea; and by extending numerous paths onto the sea, the project aims to generate more intersection and encounters. The extensions grow as pier-like structures on the water and inhabit programs on it, and where the piers leave the land, the community center buildings are located as the gates to these platforms of share and production. Although the community centers and the piers are physically connected to each other by the walkways and roads on the shore and on the land in different parts in a more local scale, the piers are also aimed to be connected through the water in a more urban scale. Therefore, the very end of the pier acts as a floating platform that is able to visit the other piers and plug itself to those piers in order to exchange the happenings of different community centers. By doing that, the community center emerges as a space that can be used not only by the locals of the neighborhood but also by all the urbanites of Istanbul to create a platform for the integration of the migrants and the interaction between different cultures. On the other hand, the community center buildings located on these paths are designed as warehouse-like buildings that several platforms and volumes can be plugged in and out to dissolve into and build up from the programmatic landscape of the pier paths. As they are located on the rails of the paths/piers, it is possible to reproduce the building and adjust in each pier according to the user preferences with varying combinations and configurations. The mobile platforms and volumes can either be used as a part of the building or moved onto the pier; in a way the buildings act as stations for all the activities. While the building dissolves physically and programmatically to activate the pier, it also constantly changes with the feedbacks from the pier. Rather than equalizing the differences, the pier and the building reproduce themselves from the interactions and intersections of the city.