The Pazar: The Urban and Tectonic Structures of Istanbul's Open Markets

Turkey's street markets, the pazar, penetrate every neighborhood one day per week for centuries. Yet, neither this ephemeral marketplace nor the man-made generative structure that defines its practice has changed with any significance despite social, cultural, and technological changes. The pazar's fundamental practice of placemaking, in its absolute agility, simplicity and responses to terrain and climate, has been nearly perfected, along with the choreography of set up and take down. The structure distinctively practices cocreation using forces of kinetics and redundancy to create compact or expansive markets. Unique to other open markets is the use of passive open space, like local streets, watersheds, or residual land, but never active public space, like parks or public squares. The insights of this research offer new more agile approaches to city spatial design for contemporary open-air exchanges as well as new directions in man-made generative structures for ephemeral placemaking architecture.

Team: Selva Gürdoğan, Gregers Tang Thomsen, Derya İyikul, Beyza Gürdoğan, Şule Kurşuncu, Betül Nuhoğlu, Sina Dressler

Type: Research & Maps
Commisioned by: SANALarc