Tenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

This research explores how coasts as constructed environments between the land and sea can become landscapes of research for deciphering processes of urbanization. Referring to the emerging paradigms in urban studies with particular emphasis on the human-nonhuman agency, nature-culture continuum, urban-nature entanglements, coasts are reframed as elements of the planetary space where physical and material alterations of urbanization become evident. The research generates a critical cartography following the shaping of the coast in Istanbul by human impact. The methodology of “critical delineation” presents a cartographic and conceptual research by contouring the changing coastlines among land and water in Istanbul. The shaping of the coasts by humans and projects embody the flows of materials among terrestrial fix and the aqueous networks that delineate the deformation along coastlines as spatial edges of urbanization. Critical delineation uses aerial photographs, coastal charts, maps, projects, and field trips to decipher evidences and become witness to changing landscapes of material displacements at the edges of the city through coastlines at all scales and timespans. Questioning the limits of human will to appropriate space in relation to society and nature, the coastlines reveal new geographies of constructed coastlands. The human shaping of the environment through construction moments bear evidence to material flows of coastal, urban, and environmental changes. The research forms a critique of urbanization by ethic and aesthetic engagements with space and the construction, and the appropriation of land and water in the contested ecosystems of planetary space in the case of Istanbul.