HISTORY AND PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The city of Istanbul, located very close to the North Anatolian Fault, is vulnerable to earthquakes. In 1991 two earthquakes hit the Marmara Zone, affecting Istanbul, killed more than ten thousand, destroyed thousands of buildings and left many people homeless. There is a potential of another earthquake to hit the same region as declared by the scientists. Therefore, the Turkish Government established a special organization called "Istanbul Project Coordination Unit" within the project ISMEP to carry out the assessment studies and rehabilitation projects to improve the social buildings including the schools to save lives and to minimize the negative impact on the inhabitants of Istanbul in case of a big earthquake.

The project consists of the rehabilitation of 44 school buildings in Istanbul, Turkey within the Istanbul Seismic Master Plan. The works related to the rehabilitation program includes demolition of the existing Istanbul have been built during the second half of the twentieth century and considered to have high risk in term buildings, data collection, architectural and engineering design studies, preparation of construction tender documents and provision of supervision services during the construction works. Uygur's role in the project was to carry out the architectural design, engineering design coordination, preparation of construction tender documents and provision of architectural supervision during the construction works.

Considering the uncontrolled and uneven population growth in Istanbul, every single day school quantity becomes more insufficient. Thus, the quantity of the classrooms of the demolished schools sometimes even doubled with the new program according to the region’s need. Number of classrooms were increased from 857 to 1584 and total floor area was increased from 116014 to 298.728 m2. Currently 42 schools of this package project are in use. 2 of them are cancelled.

MATERIALS

Rehabilitation program for 44 schools includes demolition of existing schools and construction of new ones. Following the demolition of existing structures, the students would be temporarily transferred to neighboring schools. Therefore, the Client worked on a work program in order to decrease the negative impact in each neighborhood. Supporting this approach, Uygur selected a construction methodology and building materials to shorten the construction period for each school so that the students would be transferred to their original schools at earliest possible.

Due to the nature and age of its users, the materials to be used were selected in terms of their durability and ease of maintenance. The main purpose of selecting such materials was to avoid shorter periodic maintenance and basically repainting.

PROJECT IMPACT

The existing schools to be demolished were found to be insufficient to comply with the current seismic and fire codes in Turkey. Besides, they were inadequate to provide the educational spatial requirements e.g. gym, library, labs, common spaces, etc. Almost each school looked like the other, without having an identity, as they have previously been constructed by using the monotype design provided by the Ministry of Education.

Uygur Architects’ design approach that stood against the monotype architectural attitude, resulted in those 44 schools’ transformation in a way that each has its own authentic spatial qualities. Architects also considered each school design with its own special requirements by talking directly to its users: school directors, teachers, etc. Even though all these new schools have the same concept, each of them is designed separately within its own context. A new architectural alphabet was designed for these 44 schools by the architects and different sentences were constructed.

As a significant design principle, contemporary education understanding is adopted by composing various indoor and outdoor common spaces. The major impact of this project will be on the existing environment and mainly on the younger generations: students aged 6 to 14. The schools are the first social spaces that the children experience. Uygur Architects believe that rather than the classrooms, design of the social spaces in schools would have a more important impact on the children, basically by providing increased opportunities for communication and interaction. In addition, experiencing high quality common spaces would also increase the next generations' demand for higher spatial quality.