Abstract
There are emerging discussions about two important airports when considering airport and landscape design in Istanbul, Turkey, recently. The opening of Istanbul Airport let the transformation of the function of Ataturk Airport to a “Nation’s Garden” with the claim of the being the third largest park in the world. Although this proposal brings about a lot of debates it also opens a new field to investigate and discuss issues about infrastructure, landscape and contemporary urban conditions. Besides the conventional landscape planning and design approaches, Atatürk Airport urge to apply novel design strategies due its size and complex infrastructure setting. The theory of Landscape Urbanism with its focus on landscape as a part of infrastructural system propose suitable ground for large scale transformation projects. This research has two aims; to present principles and novel strategies by investigation of airport transformation projects in the context of Landscape Urbanism and to discuss the applicability of presented strategies for Atatürk Airport in its own locality from ecological, socio-cultural and socio-economic perspectives. For these aims, design research was structured by utilizing extensive literature review about 29 cases to develop a comparative matrix. Then field studies were conducted to reveal the existing conditions, potentials and limitations of the Atatürk Airport. This research contributes to the contemporary landscape and urban design agenda by presenting key strategies and principles that were introduced by Landscape Urbanism and highlights the viability of the theory into the local conditions of İstanbul and open the issue into discussion over Atatürk Airport Case.
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