Orsini Alicia

École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Marseille

P22 | ISTANBUL: RESTRUCTURING A CITY BLOCK. From the urban fabric to the bank, revealing the preexisting environment.

by Orsini Alicia 



The Unkapani district, located in the heart of Istanbul's historical peninsula, is the last known residential area. This heterogeneous territory in its morphology, its paths, its geography and heritage, requires an approach not as a whole but rather in its features. On the banks of the Golden Horn, it played a very important role in the commercial and industrial period. The mill Unkapani, last trace of this previous activity, is now a ruined building, abandoned. The project is suitable for two situations. To live in the ruins and to invest in the banks in order to prove the pre-existence. These punctuations will showcase a city axis/banks which is now forgotten. The ruins of the old mill will invest and rehabilitate the site in order to create a "hot spot" on the district level. The existing mosque will be renovated; a market hall and a housing addition will be created too, using a set known in Istanbul, the partition wall masonry and wood packing. The situation on the bank returns the lost uses of "live and share." Equipment, housing and a fishing pontoon will be created. A metropolitan scale will be found. The vegetal walk is valued and punctuated by events such as a mineral circus with a gazebo. Regarding housing, the technique of masonry shear comes and it will be dug, suggesting to redraw the skyline of the old warehouses. The project appropriates a human context and a cultural and political patrimony to stick to a story and add a new stratum.


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Alicia Orsini.  Native and Corsican origin, she grew up in an island in the heart of the Mediterranean where culture and traditions are deeply rooted. She joined the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Marseille in 2007 with a passion since childhood for this discipline and structures of all time. Having obtained the license of Architecture, she joined in 2010 the "LAB43" department interested in Mediterranean cities. In this continuity, she begun in 2012 her Final Project Study on the city of Istanbul. City-legend in the heart of many stories and civilizations, Istanbul is one of the major cities, which for several centuries has a fascination for aesthetes. From around the world, they have appropriated this heritage stone and dream. The Final Project studied the reconstruction of Istanbul's block sites in the oldest part of the city. She graduated with a national distinction as she won the 2012 Best French Diplomas in the French Academy of Architecture. She currently works in architecture practices in Marseille, the European Capital of Culture 2013, and in preparation for the empowerment project management in order to fly soon on her own...