Abstract

What if we fold time and see the different time frames together? For instance, while Theodora was watching the race at the Hippodrome, she would also attend the circumcision feast of the sons of Suleyman the Magnificent; the janissary band of municipality would take a stage at the same celebration; Uncle Septimius Severus could give presents to the siblings and the Japanese tourist, Okazaki, would take a picture of that moment.

Cities are the reality of a physical and spatial response to their temporality -which clouds the mind creating a feeling of timelessness. This situation of the city prevents designers from creating ‘the perfect space’. However, in contrast to a negative sense of imperfection; uncontrolled, imprecise and incompatible city dynamics, keeps the imaginations vigorous, passes incomplete data to the inhabitants and encourages them to interact with the city to fill in the blanks. Because, unlike the irrational space of myths, a city is an obscured, ignored and eradicated chaos.

As every civilization imprints self-traces onto cities with monumental structures, intimately imperfect daily life flows consistently and leaves the prints behind. While some cities cannot reflect today’s time, space and life stratifications as much as their past; Istanbul is compressed between struggle of past and present.

Keywords: Istanbul, imperfection, temporal folding, timelessness, incompleteness, body, superpose, looping, production and consumption, fluctuating urban space

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