With Istanbul as the immutable intersection of vast and diverse mobilities, the rich design by MVRDV + ABOUTBLANK for the Yenikapı Transfer Point and Archaeo Park offer a unique possibility to combine and transpose contemporary transportation intelligence with a remarkable historical heritage. Layers in time will be combined with numerous lines through the city of Istanbul, a myriad of interactions of time and space. More images and architects’ description after the break.
If a cosmopolitan city is to be defined as a place where circulation of different people, knowledge, technology, cultures, ideologies, capital and goods throughout history intersects and transposes, then Istanbul has performed this function for several thousand years: Istanbul is a «global junction point» that not only connects continents, but also civilizations and lately new forms of modernities. On the architectural milieu, Istanbul’s urban texture is shaped by the surviving fragments of Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman civilizations, which interfuse with rapidly expanding modern and global frameworks. It has Orthodox Christian churches, Sunni mosques, Sephardic synagogues, classical cisterns, rings of ancient fortifications and embellished palaces in the same frame with grand boulevards, metropolitan centers, gated suburbs, derelict slums and shiny skyscrapers. This corresponds to an urban agglomeration that does not define a unified totality; instead it indicates conflicts, consensuses and chaotic flows.
