Proportion in the City

Istanbul is not short of objects. It is short of courts that still work, streets that still take a body, and edges that know whether they are public or private.

A new building that only solves itself leaves the street worse. A new building that sets a court, a walk and a height that the next plot can meet leaves the street better.

Proportion at city scale is often spoken as height and street width. That is the start. The work is how the room holds when someone crosses a threshold and someone else looks from a window.

In Karaköy the street still takes deliveries and evening light. A new building has to enter that sequence. The façade is not an image; it is a part of that sequence.

A court works in the city as it does in a house. It is something to look at. If not, it is only a void, and a void photographs; it does not hold.

Residual plots are the usual commission. A leftover between two buildings, a court that has been roofed, a street that has lost its ground floor. The temptation is to fill them. The work is to decide what must remain open so the fill has something to face.

Master planning is often asked to produce an image of the future. We produce a set of rules that can survive a change of architect: what faces the court, what may rise, where a walk must remain.

A harbour edge we worked on had become a car park between two sheds. The plan did not add a landmark. It fixed a quay walk, a line of shade and a pavilion that could take a gathering and then return to being a roof.

Proportion is also what you refuse to align. Not every cornice should meet. Not every front should step to the same line. A small offset can keep a walk from becoming a corridor.

The rule is not regularity. The rule is that a person still knows where they are when the buildings change hands. Proportion in the city is not a style. It is a distance a body can stand.