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A Proposal for an Urban Garden, Bursa, Turkey.

Part 2 Project 2000
Yael Brosilovski
 University of Nottingham Nottingham | UK
This project is about fluidity and the feminine. I wanted to address social discrimination against women and the associated prejudice against bodily fluids. I therefore looked at ways of introducing the concept of fluidity, but fluidity with a different twist - one where function becomes secondary to an architectural formal language that grasps fluidity in a more metaphorical way, by means of experience.

Situated within the context of the city of Bursa, Turkey, the proposal is for an urban garden together with a body treatment parlour. The proposal provides an antidote to the hectic masculine urban environment all around,
offering a soothing layer of pleasure and play over the underlying rationality. A sanctuary - A feminine interpretation of sanctuary. A sensual place, a maternal touch, in which the body is emancipated.

Borrowing from Luce Irigaray's poetic writings, 'Elemental Passions' and 'The Forgetting of Air', the project is to be read as a story of relationships - relationships between architectural components, between boundaries and edges, but also between materials, relationships between form and light, between seasonal and daily rhythms - a story of relationships as experienced through feminine eyes.



The project was situated within the context of a broader theoretical enquiry about the role of architecture in fostering a sensuous correspondence with the world. As Yael herself puts it:'We want to explore architecture like a piece of sensuous art, architecture that desires, feels, listens, looks and touches.' The scheme that evolved - a landscaped retreat within the centre of Bursa in Turkey - sought to articulate a more corporeal, sensuous and fluid approach to form, feminine, perhaps, rather than feminist. In creating this language of forms she sought to challenge the striated masculine space that surrounded the site, to provide a haven of tranquility.

2000
Site axonometric showing the relationship between the various components proposed for the urban garden: a. the relation walls b. the burrows c. the 'scar' d. existing factory from the 1950's e. acoustic garden.
Site plan - located in Umurbey, a relatively central yet off the main street residential area, the site stands as a representation of the feminine through its horizontal nature in relation to the vertical 5-7 storey voyeuristic buildings that surround it.
Between inside and outside -'Let me flower outwards too. Free, in the air' Detail of the sleeve opening out to the sky, allowing for passage of light, water and air. Seasonal changes are expressed by illumination: reds in winter, cooling blues in summer.
Detail view of an individual rooflight (elaboration of slide 10). The semi-transparent material allows light to infiltrate the underground burrows, while the tubes allow for an underground distribution of daylight, glowing at nighttime from within.
Initial development of the burrows, limb-like labyrinthine underground spaces, carved into an existing slab.
Internal views of the burrows.
Internal views of the 'scar', showing a glimpse into the burrows. The bleeding wall is made of stone/concrete wall through which thick red fluid runs down, flows under and floods the rest of the site.
Layering a new economy of relations: the right angled existing factory is left vacant for initiation of the users. Transformation is kept to minimum by the suspension of glass structures resulting in a dialogue of light and pattern on the existing fabric.
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