The project builds its conceptual foundation on Gilles Clément’s Third Landscape concept, Anna Tsing’s book The Mushroom at the End of the World, and the concept of ruderal.
Höyük (Mound):
“Mounds are low hills formed by the accumulation of rubble in settlement areas that were destroyed for various reasons throughout history, often containing buried elements of structural remnants.” – Turkish Language Association (TDK)
HÖYÜK
HÖYÜK is a human-made ruderal landscape-monument fostering interspecies relationships amidst the rubble of a 600-year-old multicultural neighborhood in Istanbul. It exists in the temporal interval of the destruction-and-reconstruction reflex of urban transformation.
The human-made nature of the Höyük is immediately apparent. Its very presence evokes curiosity: What lies beneath? A royal tomb, an ancient city, a burial site, or perhaps a treasure?
The Höyük narrates a concealed story-its tale lies beneath the soil.
In the project area, we identified a space untouched by human design, located between the first phase of urban regeneration (the demolition process) and the second phase (reconstruction). This transitional zone, currently used by paper collectors, is filled with paper and cardboard waste, as well as the rubble of demolished structures.
Surrounded by barriers, this “structurally empty” space has become part of a new landscape that integrates the existing waste. Ruderal pionee plants have already begun to rejuvenate the area. The Höyük rises over the remnants of the narrative being written by the urban transformation process in the region. Through ruderal landscape additions, the project aims to support and enhance the existing biodiversity.
HÖYÜK is a novel, multi-layered, living ruderal monument in the Süleymaniye district. It celebrates the overlooked “waste” and the spontaneously evolving biodiversity in “empty” plots.
