Halicport, the Arcades of Istanbul
The Halicport concept proposal sought to transform the 19th century dry docks and ship building facilities on the Golden Horn in Istanbul into a new mixed used complex with retail shopping, hotels, restaurants, shoreline promenade and performance space. The Halicport design as a multipurpose urban redevelopment retains the existing historic industrial buildings and extends their morphological language to the surrounding city fabric. This language of long linear volumes is applied in a series of buildings placed on terraces in parallel to the shoreline of the Golden Horn. Arcades lining the facade of the new buildings create a uniform visual appearance that is also a reference to the historic Byzantine and Ottoman fabric of the city. This project shows the influence and participation of the architect Alpaslan Ataman, AN expert on Ottoman architecture and Istanbul urbanism, who joined GAD in the mid 2010s as part of the research efforts of the GAD Foundation.