aqueduct su kemeri

Reyhanlı, Van, Turkey

fall 2019

a competition entry for: Building for Humanity ‘The Integration And Inclusion Of Syrian Refugees In Turkey’

download the booklet here

Lake Yehişehir’s water flows through valleys and farms, streets and homes in Reyhanlı, connecting all people and places, provides life to all. On its path from the lake to the city center, the water sustains plants, animals and people alike. As the need for water surpasses any demographic categorizations, this proposal makes no difference between the users, the target groups or beneficiaries of the project. On the contrary it hopes to blur any such distinction. Acknowledging the great connection water provides through the complex social and physical context of Reyhanlı, this proposal is an Aqueduct, which forefronts water’s indiscriminate sustaining.​ 

Alongside being a waterway for farmlands it passes through, on the given site the Aqueduct a spine for houses and programs to plug in, while traversing the city it becomes a portico. Ultimately the Aqueduct is a monument physically interlacing the urban and the natural, and an ontological bridge phenomenally reminding every user – and beneficiary – the universality of those served on its way.

Inspired by the resilient change the waterway can accommodate – a constant flow in a stable bed – the proposal utilizes a shelter design that can transform from a temporary tent enclosure to a permanent brick housing unit based on a unit of the Aqueduct– the Arch. As time flows, more shelters can plug in to the arches of the Aqueduct and the existing houses can extend utilizing the same structural system, allowing for the growth of living spaces and the number of those who can be housed. As the Aqueduct bends and folds across the tight boundaries of the designated site, the outgrowing habitation establishes a spectral sense of interiority and exteriority.

As ‘water will flow and find its way’ (su akar yatagını bulur​), the proposed Aqueduct will persevere through not subduing and simplifying existing sociocultural and geographical topographies, but by adapting and growing with them. 

Advisor: Aleksandr Mergold

Team: Ihwa Choi, Ekin Bilal