To build a tree house is to questions the relationship between culture and nature, the artificial and the natural, the acquired and the innate. 

 

In the growing city of Istanbul, where the expansion of the city puts huge pressure on natural resources, building a tree house challenges the development of the territory.

 

The particularity of the Cekmekoy competition site is its location at the edge of two territories: the densely urbanised south along the Marmara sea, and the vast natural systems of ridges and basins to the north. The 2009 Istanbul masterplan acknowledges the need to densify the city to the south, while protecting the forest and water zones in the north where ecological agriculture and ecological tourism should be promoted. 

 

In this sense, the competition’s assignment can be related to this regional effort: how can these two territories profit from each others presence? 

 

I intend to formulate a plan in which human presence and natural resources are indissociable components of a single system. The starting point would be to map all the existing ressources of the site, its fauna and flora, the movement lines, the topography, the energy flux, the climate and the future uses. The map will serve as a base for the positioning of the tree houses, and it will inform the decisions on materiality and construction. 

 

In my previous work on tree houses (Wood Stock, Hut festival competition 2016, winner, built | Wooden Crown, Vectorworks Benelux Design Prize 2019, unbuilt), the projects catalysed the site’s ressources into impactful projects. I intend to achieve these qualities for the Tree House Park Competition.