“Urban Sliding”
Carole Pralong, Contributers: Kevin Joutel, Nathanaelle Baes

Pınar Gökbayrak (PG): What were your motives for registering to Zeytinburnu site? What were the appealing and challenging aspects of this site for you?
Carole Pralong (CP): We have chosen Zeytinburnu site principally because of its topic “managing social mixity” and because it was in İstanbul, city on two continents. We were very excited with this subject on this specific place.

To deal with the city means to deal with its population. Answering this question by the specific mean of urban design was an opportunity for us to say how we are attached to this problem.

Zeytinburnu site questions at the same time the problem of the city center and its limits. It asks the question of the peripheries inscribing it in a perspective of urban renewal.
We had the opportunity when we were in İstanbul to see the projects proposed by some investors at the MIPIM 2004. Those projects reflected a certain idea of the city: segregation / exclusion / security.

The challenge was to be able to propose an alternative to those projects. For whom are we constructing? What are the limits of those exclusion systems?

PG: In your opinion, what is the most powerful aspect of your project?
CP: The most powerful aspect of our project is to propose an urban structure which takes advantages of the existing data of the site and recycling them through a complex process. The population, the topography, the voids, the symbolic existing places like mosques, and empty towers were studied precisely to be as close as possible to the İstanbul reality. By this process, the city regenerates itself, following different phases of project.

PG: The subtheme of Zeytinburnu site was ‘Renewal for Whom?’ An urban transformation is always a very difficult process to handle. One of the most critical issues of an urban transformation project is the risk of creating a gentrification in the neighbourhood. What is your point of view regarding gentrification in cities and what was your proposal regarding this issue in your project?
CP: Zeytinburnu provides several advantages. It is situated close to the historical city center and sea. It is very well served by public transport. The risk is obviously that the urban regeneration displaces the existing population in the peripheries far away from the city center and that a new population, richer, takes its place. These social areas would allow to re-dense the city on itself replacing the weak buildings. The city authorities seem to hesitate between giving better housing conditions to the people with a very low income or expropriating them to recuperate grounds and to engage a process of speculation.

In this context, we had to ask ourselves about the destination of the projects, knowing that 40% of the population of İstanbul is living beyond the break point of poverty. Our work on densities allows us to propose various typologies for the existing population and a new one.

The social structure of the neighbourhood has to evolve to integrate a development strategy on the scale of İstanbul. This change can’t be done against the existing population. The objectives of proximity and density are re-actualised by the connection of public spaces which structure the city on the scale of its territory.

PG : The site was to be evaluated as “tabula rasa” since all the buildings had to be demolished due to an earthquake risk. But, it is clear that the site is tightly intertwined within the urban network, with its economical and productional capacity, as well as with its close proximity to infrastructural hubs, historical sites, and city center. Although the site woud be a “tabula rasa” without any references left for the transformation project, it was impossible to neglect its critical position within the entire city. Therefore it was a very challenging dilemma. How did you deal with this problem?
CP : Tabula Rasa vs Tabula Natura
The seismic emergency cannot be a pretext for Tabula Rasa and for the expropriation of the actual populations. The Tabula Rasa would have implied to radical changes in the socio-economic and urban structure of Sümer.

More than an answer to the seismic emergency, our work on Zeytinburnu reflects a more global work on the question of the anarchic development of the peripheries. A work on a prefabricated architecture had to be studied to recuperate the lost time of a soft urban strategy. This soft strategy is founded on the site qualities to increase urbanity and density and to integrate as a basic data the diversity by programmatic friction.

In direct contradiction to a “zoned city” where everything is juxtaposed, we propose an urban design where all is connected, made of grafting and agglomeration on given spaces where people tolerate each other and live together.

A varied open space of recycled publicness... A global but discontinued network...