The team, including İpek Üstündağ and Yalçın Demircan, graduates of our school’s Department of Architecture, won the 3rd Honorable Mention award in the Salacak Urban Design Competition, a free, national urban design competition opened by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Department of Studies and Projects.

The competition aims to design the Salacak coast within the given borders in the area located within the Aziz Mahmut Hüdayi, Salacak and Selimiye neighborhoods of Üsküdar district of Istanbul province. We congratulate our graduates and teammates.

Design Team: Ece Avcı – ITU Architecture, Bahadır Kantarcı – Gedik University Architecture, İpek Üstündağ – Kadir Has University Architecture, Yalçın Demircan – Kadir Has University Architecture, Sevgi Aslan – ITU Landscape Architecture

ARCHITECTURAL REPORT The humble silhouette of the historical peninsula is not just a view for Üsküdar. It has very deep memories. What has the Salacak coast witnessed. Wars, conquests, enthusiasm, sorrow… All of them have a weight on it. There is a responsibility of being across from the historical peninsula. There is a desire to tell what you see with the poise of greeting the other side… With this responsibility, the Salacak coastline becomes a navigation route.

The Reunion Route: The route extending from Üsküdar Square to the Maiden’s Tower seemed to want to continue along the coast without bending. The Reunion Route aims to respond to this desire, while keeping in mind both the desire to get closer and the beauty of looking from afar. As you approach the end of the route, you are left alone with the Maiden’s Tower, as if there is no one or nothing around, the sea on the right and the sea on the left. While the gradation formed along the pier functions as a viewing area, the boats departing from the end of the route wait to take you to the Maiden’s Tower.

Tidal Theatre: The amphitheater creates itself to show the view where the waves come and go in a rush as if carrying news from Sultanahmet and Hagia Sophia in the background where the landscape reveals all of history. It creates a social composition with the commercial unit filling the lower part and the city pool right next to it. It becomes a part of new scenarios that have not been foreseen before. It produces encounter tactics in the flow of time. It becomes a gathering place for different groups and embraces those who socialize in their solitude against the serenity of the sea.

City Pools: In the 1800s, Istanbulites used sea baths to cool off on hot summer days. These baths consisted of a pier surrounding a section of the sea, indoor spaces on a section of the pier, and a small pool in the middle. Today, the scattered, unsafe, and uncommunicative sea use on the Salacak coastline supports the formation of city pools for public sea use, offering the city dwellers areas where the city opens up to the water and integrates both physically and conceptually. The aim was for the pools that let in the sea to become places of memory by also referring to the old Istanbul baths.

Fishermen’s Shelter and Sharing Amphitheater: Fishermen’s shelters are places for fishermen to both work and socialize. A sharing amphitheatre integrated with the fishing shelter has been proposed, which will create public common areas for the shelter, which is not possible for city dwellers to be involved in today, and will increase the interaction between the sea, people and fishermen. The new fishing shelter offers the opportunity for fishermen, who spend almost all their days there, to mingle with the public and share their stories, while it also makes it possible for visitors to be a part of the fishermen’s lives while eating their fish sandwiches in the amphitheatre, facing the sea.

Bio-Habitat: The continuous green corridor designed along the coastline creates a new route on the sea in order to make the coast accessible and perceivable for all types of users. The new platform added to the circulation system aims to support the ecological integrity of the city. The space, which creates a new space for the birds in the region, also allows people on the Salacak coast to spend time watching Salacak, the cliffs and the birds from the sea.