I was invited to sit in as a panelist on a session at the festival by Marisol Garcia, from UCL at the Eleanor Marx-Aveling Galleries. The discussion was on the contemporary influences, forces, processes and outcomes of urban transformation in Istanbul, centred around the case of Kartal, where an international design competition has been won by Zaha Hadid Architects to transform a post-industrial neighbourhood into a new CBD for Istanbul (‘the CBD’ being the broad theme for this year’s festival).
Following a well researched presentation by the students, the discussion moved onto the possibilities that may exist somewhere in between practice and research to influnce urban change towards more inclusive futures. It was interesting to note both the depth of research and the attempt to implement methodologies for bottom up drivers within processes of urban transformation. The session proved to be too short for the discussion to progress to combining bottom up approaches and inputs with the top down policies and debates. It will be interesting to see if parallel tools will be proposed.
For further information on the context of the session, a web article by UCL’s MSc Building and Urban Design in Development (BUDD) is linked here
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu/courses/masters/msc_building/Fieldwork/Istanbulreport2010lowres
Blog by MSc Building and Urban Design in Development course at UCL (within Development Planning Unit)
http://www.abitare.it/highlights/city-of-islands-istanbul-at-a-crossroads/
Festival Website
http://thisisnotagateway.squarespace.com/2010-programme/
