Architectural Highlights

Ataköy Housing Estate is a new-town morphology satellite settlement located on the western development corridor of Istanbul along the Marmara shore. Türkiye Emlak Kredi Bank’s project reflects the changes in building development and housing policies of Turkey in the last 70 years. Phases I and II has 2-13 storey-high 90 blocks, 1514 apartments in 16 types, 2+1 - 7+1 and 93-248m2. Criticized for its socio-economic aspects in the 1960s, the project is distinguished with its reinterpretation of post-war modern tendencies, total design and planning approach and spatial quality. The Elementary School, designed by Muhteşem Giray in 1957-62, reflects similar tendencies.

Threat

Docomomo Turkey has been campaigning for the designation of the site since 2005 but has so far been successful in designating the Elementary School in 2006. The beach was replaced with a shopping mall and marina in the 1980s whereas the motels and camping on the shore were replaced with high-rise development after 2008, ending the relationship of the estate with the sea. Since the 1999 Marmara earthquake, disaster risk has become a pretext for profit-oriented urban transformation and regeneration, some of which have already resulted in partial losses and additions to the context. This campaign aims to preserve the design and physical integrity of the estate through designation as an urban site and using structural strengthening techniques against current trends of demolishing and rebuilding of individual housing blocks.

Turkey's Modern Heritage Agenda 2022/2023.

Turkey's Modern Heritage Agenda events, which have been carried out since 2021 in cooperation with Docomomo Turkey and KORDER-Koruma ve Restorasyon Uzmanları Derneği (Association of Conservation and Restoration Experts), bring to discussion the issues that came to the agenda in the previous year and affected the modern architectural heritage.

At the last event held on April 5, 2024, the most recent threats concerning the construction of new buildings and the demolition and rebuilding of blocks in Ataköy Phases I-II were discussed. Such interventions would affect the design, physical and social integrity of Ataköy Phases I-II negatively, and threaten the whole estate with the danger of rapid destruction and rebuilding by example. Docomomo Turkey has been campaigning for the designation of the estate as an urban site for the last fifteen years and is promoting structural strengthening and restoration of the buildings rather than rebuilding.