İstanbul, 2016
Boğazköy Camii
The relationship between the religious architecture and modern architecture in Turkey is always problematic. We can say that religious architecture has been neglected at the modernism journey of Turkish architecture even though there are significant examples like TBMM Mosque of Behruz Cinici and Sancaklar Mosque of Emre Arolat. Keeping these modern approaches in mind, we have tried a different approach that may be considered hybrid. We analyzed the historical Ottoman Mosques from the point of their form geometry and interpret it with cubic forms that makes the mosque part of the neighborhood. The neighborhood is at the outskirts of the city close to Bahcesehir which is one of the first satellite city of Istanbul. This area has been developed as a garden city concept however surrounded by dense urbanism as a result of the construction boom that Istanbul faced after 2000. The main character of the built environment exist around Boğazköy Mosque reflects mass housing with 6-10 floor apartment units. For that reason, we have tried to link the mosque to the housing pattern.
We need to say that this include a criticism as well both from the point of the result of the dense urbanism and the neo-classical mosque that is considered as an only way of creating religious space for the majority of the public.