Simulations urbaines
2003
Videostills : Zeytinburnu, Gültepe, Istanbul.
Zeytinburnu and Gültepe are historical gecekondu areas in Istanbul.
These images have been exhibited in a group exhibition together with works by Marco Funke and Nicolas Moulin, in october 2005 in Betonsalon gallery, Paris, accompagnying « Illegal city », a non-real-time 3d-simulation on urban growth. The exhibition was accompagnied by the following text :
The generic city envisioned by Rem Koolhas describes the « becoming similar », the homogenization of the urban agglomeration. However, this term omits the history and self-organization of individuals re-appropriating urban space.
70% of Istanbul’s buildings are built without any authorization. The phenomenon of gecekondus, shanty towns which appeared in the 1940ies, is ongoing. In these shanty towns one can observe the almost natural settlement of solid economies and tactics to cope with the everyday. The simulation « Illegal city » was made using genetic algorithms, whose development is mostly based on interviews realized with Istanbul urbanists in 2003. It creates a fiction simulating the growth of Istanbul, an agglomeration of 19 million inhabitants.
