'Stanbulin' is the answer that Greeks living around Konstantinupolis gave when asked where they were going: to town. These days, this is an almost impossible task what with traffic amounting to one big tailback. To alleviate this congestion there is a large-scale rail project in the pipeline.

The task of this graduation project is to stitch the seven-kilometre-long coastal belt of the ancient district of Stanbul - a district lagging behind in both economy and tourism - to the rest of the city. Construction of the scheduled rail project will make the present coastal railway line superfluous, meaning that at least one of the barriers between city and water can be razed. The conditions for urban development were researched at length. They relate to economic development, traffic infrastructure and civil engineering works such as harbours, sewage plants and soil treatment. These and other aspects together lead logically from one intervention to the next.

A structural concept shows the conditions for development at an urban scale, relating them to functional and morphological themes. The interventions in the structure likewise relate to sub-areas fleshed out as key urban projects and allowing for the future inclusion of, say, as yet undeveloped programmes. The whole gives a clearer indication of the main issues involved in organizing the urban structure at the various scales.

Place of education: Rotterdam
Tutors: Stefan Gall, Harm Tilman, Bert van Meggelen & Hulya Yürekli
Specialization: urban design / landscape architecture.