The project was a design for the Competition organized by UNESCO that was concerning with the subject of Gentrification in the Historical Districts of the cities.

 

Antakya’s Historical District; Antioch Being counted among Rome, Alexandria, and Constantinople as one of the great metropolises of the Roman Empire; the city where the name “Christian” was first pronounced, Antakya is a city of 2300 years. The city has been under the reigns of different civilizations since its establishment, and all of these civilizations left their marks on the spatial arrangement as well as the social arena. These different periods acquire the city different, but cooperating layers and the spell of being at the human scale physically, at the generations scale symbolically and in the collective and individual perception. It is the spaces of Antakya that hides the wisdom that she strained throughout the centuries, but these spaces disappear day by day. There is illegal housing that destroys the intimacy of the historic texture.

 

Conceptual Design Idea: “The metaphor of atom as activation energy for a model of historical districts”

 

The orbits in the macro scale of the city also act as the energy admitters around the nucleus. The memories of the city that emerge on the same orbital in the new and the historic districts also spatially reinforce the dialectic between the city and the citizen and create the synergy between these two areas. Thus, the historic heart stays lively and escapes from being a slum. The corridors that the orbitals obtain the city via creating the circulation patterns act as veins carrying blood between forums, thus nurturing the historical district.