Ariadna Choptiany

Urban Manifold : Distribution at Taksim

Primary Advisor: Patrick Harrop

The “essence” of water is so primal and fundamental in our consciousness yet simultaneously so elusive. It is the artifacts that respond to the principles of water, which we find architecturally so fascinating, in that they reflect the place of water within a culture. The issue of water poses fundamental architectural problems that require serious consideration with respect to gravity, elevation and pressure, all of which imply spatialization, temporality and movement.

Taksim reservoir, currently operating as an art gallery, was originally built as part of a water distribution system for the municipality of Beyoglu, Istanbul. This system which fragments and branches throughout the urban environment, emerges from the ground arriving at each mosque via fountains essential to each community. The elevation and geography of Taksim situates the water table above sea level creating natural water springs echoing the principles of gravity and pressure integral to architectural water systems such as water towers. This project brings water back to Taksim reservoir.

This project directly implicates what is not seen, what is hidden from view and comes out of the landscape, perforating the ground and emerging, flowing directly into our daily lives. Water is a dynamic, unstoppable material demanding architectural responsiveness. This thesis examines the material quality of water, which serves as an immediate analogue from an urban infrastructure to an architectural scale. The infrastructure of water and its systems provided tangible evidence of materiality, a fundamentally architectural issue addressing several architectural scales; the scale of the city, then moving towards the building, and finally to the scale of the detail, each employing these principles of water at the site of Taksim.

The form of the pressurized vessels emerged by borrowing from traditional geometric Islamic patterning and through the extensive process of material exploration and casting, The movement of water though architecture is the basic framework explored to understand the relationship of water and air throughout a building and its implications within an architectural discourse. Water implicates fundamental tectonic principles, a network of systems in architecture, and its mechanics of the principles of gravity, elevation, hydrostatic and atmospheric pressure. The architecture becomes a dynamic responsive system in and of itself, exploring and presenting a hidden, underground world that is fundamental to the understanding not only of architecture, and the invisible force of the phenomena of pressure, but also the basic elements of water and air so primal in all our experiences.

“Water throughout history has been perceived as the stuff which radiates purity: H2O is the new stuff, on whose purification human survival now depends. H2O and water have become opposites: H2O is a social creation of modern times, a resource that is scarce and that call for technical management. It is an observed fluid that has lost the ability to mirror the water of dreams. The city child has no opportunities to come in touch with living water. Water can no more be observed; it can only be imagined, by reflecting on an occasional drop or a humble puddle.”*

Illich, Ivan. H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness. London: Marion Boyars Publishers (1986), 75-6.