valens archway housing units | superspace

Valens Archway housing units is a project designed for the Plan B: The City over the City competition held by Metsa Wood (Finland), for seeking out sustainable solutions that add density through additional floor area in the urban environment for growing urban population, within the prediction of that nearly 9billion people would be living in the urban area by 2050. As wooden extensions to existing buildings and infrastructure of cities, known buildings, especially under threat of demolition, were encouraged as sites for revitalization, re-development, and innovation. 

COLLIDING LINES and LIVES

AN EPILOGUE to an ARCHWAY

​Istanbul is one of the most chaotic and dense cities in the northern hemisphere of the world, with a daily population of around 20 million people traveling around the wonders and disgraces of this lively and relentless city day and night jumbled rough and tumble; nowadays feeling exhausted and overweight, the latest housing boom, expanded its boundaries more and more. It does now seem utopian, however, this will come to an end when the last piece of earth is constructed, probably sooner than expected, and then the ultimate question will come! So what now? Where are we going? What have we missed during the journey?

However, this is a rhetorical question, one of a kind solution can be derived from the city’s own roots, anamorphosis within a corrupted futuristic Freudian dream, trying to connect the mother city again along together with one of its landmarks, nearly forgotten its main purpose, just dressing up for the old postcards, so here you are, the "Valens Archway!"

It was made by Roman emperor "Valens" at the end of the 4th century, supplying the water demand in Middle-Century. It had great importance for Romans and later Ottomans and has lost its significance and functionality after technological and infrastructural advancements and pulled the plug on to become one of the landmarks of the city. The surviving section of the archway is 921 meters long, and a boulevard passes through its arches accompanying the dense traffic flow of Fatih, which is one of the oldest districts of the city with mostly preserved historical urban fabric combining a mixed-use of housing and traditional trading.

A grid structure, located above the archway, referencing the openings of the arches, serving as a vertical but linear underlay for the wooden housing modules shot with the pattern of the surrounding; is exposed to and separated from the archway to create a promenade with overlapping the fabric of wood and stone, old and new, history and future, hard and soft, day and night, heavy and light and ultimately generating an alternative elevated life, keeping tabs of the city, instead of just being watched. The linearity of the archway is emphasized with the infinite effect of the grid system, making it ground zero which has infinite possibilities for future correlations with the city.

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