Abstract

With its joyful, inspiring, motivating, and experiential qualities, play is not only a basic space creator, but also a creator of culture. Play is natural, free, imaginary, representational, and poetic. Searching constructive structures of play, such as its motivations, subjects and events, and space, and working with them could provide insights into the use of public space. Designing through play could help to open new architectural intervals that will remove congestion and bridge urban and public spaces. It could help designers think about new ways of participatory design. Considering these qualities of play, the Architectural Design Studio 7 at Istanbul Technical University adopted the theme “a view to space and design through play”during the 2012–13 fall semester and worked on two successive projects. The first project examined the conceptual, actual, and spatial properties of play; researched the relationship between play, space, and design; discussed play in urban-public spaces and daily life; and designed an urban play space. The first project served as a test run for the second project, which incorporated the first project’s research and discussion points. The second project was about re-thinking and re-designing the most important, and highly debated, square and park in Istanbul: Taksim Square and Gezi Park. The objective of the second project was to address Taksim Square and Gezi Park as an integrated public space and to look for the architectural intervals that would expand the potential of the area through the motivations of play. This article discusses the conclusions drawn from the project’s architectural design research.