A competition story: Nazım Hikmet Cultural Center

Abstract

Similar to other disciplines, architectural activities; gaining qualifications related to functional, technical and aesthetic parameters; is sprouting on the competition floor. In architecture competitions organized by many participants by allocating high-level workforce, time and budget, despite the mentioned size of the entries, the outputs may be incompatible with expectations and have problematic content. There are many studies in literature that illustrate the input – output discrepancy in architecture competitions; law, cost, ideology, sub-stage operation, etc. it points out the sources of problems related to the string of factors. This research focuses on the spatial/formal problems encountered in competition result products through the actions carried out in sub-stages. The research, which has gained experimental content through Nazım Hikmet Cultural Center, is based on concept project, implementation project, observations about current usage and the architect’s determinations about the organization. With the method followed in the research, it is tried to identify the sources of problems in the sub-stages of the competition. It is thought that repeated results of similar researches are needed in order to make the competition mission sustainable. According to the research results; i) The dominance of the employer is in question in an important part of the sub-stages of the competition. ii) Employer interventions have caused spatial problems and capacity problems in the usage stage. iii) The revisions carried out independently of the architect in the architectural project did not increase the spatial or formal quality.

Keywords

• Architectural competitions
• Architectural planning process
• Cultural center design

References

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9. * The visuals, unless otherwise specified, belong to the archive of the article authors.