Mavi Boncuk |
1934 Limited Competition for Istanbul Urban Design Proposals: Henry Prost [1](could not leave his duties in Paris), Jack Lambert, Alfred Agache[2] and Herman Elgötz[3] stayed in Istanbul for a month. 1957 Prof. Hans Högg, and 1958 Prof. Luigi Piccinato were invited as consultants to istanbul Urban Planning Office| İstanbul Nazım Plan Bürosu (founded in April 1, 1958 under Mithat Yenen's directorship.)
Articles from Turkish Union of Architects Publication. MİMARLIK 79 | 1970 Yıl: 8 Sayı: 5 Piccinato 1967 Urban Report in Turkish
Istanbul's Urban Planning (anon.) in Turkish
“Public space” versus “individual space”: Cities made of buildings or buildings made by cities | Yüksel DEMİR, Istanbul Technical University Faculty of Architecture, Istanbul, TURKEY
[1] Henri Prost (February 25, 1874 – July 16, 1959) was a French architect and urban planner. He was noted in particularly for his work in Morocco and Turkey, where he created a number of comprehensive city plans for Casablanca, Fes, Marrakesh, Meknes, Rabat, and Istanbul, including transportation infrastructure and avenues with buildings, plazas, squares, promenades and parks.
Starting from 1924, Prost was consulting the government of Turkey on an irregular basis. In 1936, Prost was invited to Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk to develop a grand plan of Istanbul's redevelopment, and he stayed there for fifteen years. He became the head of the city's Planning Office and authored the master-plan of its architectural future. Modernization and conservation were laid at its core.
Later in 1947, Prost explained his approach in such words:
The modernization of Istanbul can be compared to a chirurgical operation of the most delicate nature. It is not about creating a New City on a virgin land, but directing an Ancient Capital, in the process of complete social change, towards a Future, through which the mechanism and probably the redistribution of wealth will transform the conditions of existence. This City lives with an incredible activity. To realize the main axes of circulation without harming the commercial and industrial development, without stopping the construction of new settlements is an imperious economic and social necessity; however to conserve and protect the incomparable landscape, dominated by glorious edifices, is another necessity as imperious as the former.
After deciding to make drastic cuts through the network of historic Istanbul's neighborhoods with transportation corridors, broad avenues and pedestrian promenades, parks and monumental squares, Prost also started to work on preserving the remaining major historical monuments of Istanbul, including Roman-Byzantine, as well as Ottoman landmarks, and making them accessible to public. After his plea, Atatürk approved the transformation of Hagia Sophia, which served as the Grand Mosque of Istanbul, into a museum.
However, after all was said and done, it turned out that Prost's master-plan imposed a heavy interventionist burden on historical structure of the city. It was criticized by Le Corbusier in 1948, who previously wrote a letter to Atatürk, advising him to conserve the city without even disturbing its historic dust. Among Prost's decisions considered controversial today, the demolition of the historic Taksim Military Barracks can be cited.
[2] Alfred Hubert Donat Agache (1875 – 1959), sometimes called Alfredo Agache, formally planned the Brazilian cities of Rio de Janeiro, Recife, Porto Alegre and Curitiba in the 1940s and 1950s, supported by the Estado Novo regime in Brazil. While his plans were often too expensive to be completed, they formed the basis of more practical plans, and the affordable parts of his plan were followed for several decades, although in Curitiba the so-called Agache Plan was retired and then superseded by later urban planning efforts beginning in the 1960s. Agache also co-founded the French Society for Urban Studies.
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