Tag: turkey

Broadcast Tower

Broadcast Tower and Visitor Centre, Turkey

International architecture firms Inter National Design and Powerhouse Company won a 2014 competition to design a 100-metre-tall broadcast and observation tower in Turkey, with a design that resembles a continuous ribbon. Planned for a forested hilltop on the outskirts of the historic city of Çanakkale, the proposal was based on an undulating loop that rises above the ground and stretches upwards to create the tower.

Visitors will be able to wander along a raised path that will loop around the site and lead to the visitor centre, which will be built above the treetops on the edge of the hill facing the city. The tower is deliberately located away from the visitor centre to reduce the danger of radiation from the transmitters fixed to its surface affecting visitors or staff, and is designed with a simple form that will enable it to accommodate future technologies.

By lifting the structure off the ground, the architects aim to minimise its impact on the surrounding forest. The space surrounded by the looping pathway will be dedicated to use as a park that visitors will be able to access at points where the path touches the ground, and from a staircase beneath the viewing deck.

The architects collaborated with infrastructure and engineering firm ABT on the design of the winning proposal.

Selimiye Mosque

Selimiye Mosque, Edirne, Turkey: Classical Ottoman Period Architecture

The Selimiye Mosque was built by the great Ottoman architect, Koca Mimar Sinan Aga, in an area called Kavak Meydanı or Sarıbayır. Considered as his masterpiece it is one of the most important buildings in the history of world architecture both for its design and its monumentality. The mosque, together with the two madrasas on its southeast and southwest, is located within a courtyard measuring 190 m x 130 m. The row of shops (arafat) and recitation school (darukurra) to the west of the courtyard were added to the complex by the architect Davud Aga in the reign of Sultan Murad III (r. 982–1003 / 1574–95).

The mosque consists of a rectangular, nearly square prayer hall and, on the north side, a courtyard with porticoes. There are three entrances to the courtyard: north, east and west. In the centre of the courtyard is a 12-sided fountain. Two of the bays of the portico for latecomers have panelled vaults, while the rest are covered with domes. Each corner of the prayer hall features a minaret nearly 71 m high with three balconies. The balconies of the minarets on the northeast and northwest corners are accessed by three separate staircases.

The main feature which makes the Selimiye Mosque such a major work of architecture is the roof of the prayer hall. The monumental dome, 31.28 m in diameter, is carried on eight 12-sided pillars. The dome rises to 42.25 m in height. The zone of transition is made up of enormous squinches. The east and west pillars are supported by two buttresses each, concealed outside by the porticoes and galleries. Inside, the spaces between the walls and the pillars are adorned with galleries.

In the Selimiye Mosque, Sinan abandoned the half-domes and secondary domed spaces he had used in his other buildings with centralised plans (with the exception of the half-dome covering the space with the mihrab); he thus solved the problem of the unity of the interior space. In the centre of the prayer hall is a loge for chanters with a fountain underneath it; the sultan’s loge is in the southeast corner.

 

Eral Inci

Animation: Gifs by Eral Inci

Eral Inci is one of the newest generation of animated artists.  He is also an accomplished photographer living in Turkey.  He is best known for producing cloned motion video and GIFs as a series of images involve public places taken at night with light motion.  Many of his works feature him as the animated subject.  His animations are seamless and ‘clone-like’.  He has created a variation of GIF animation coined “cloned motion video”.  In many of his GIF’s, the loops incorporate ‘cloned’ or a copied image (many times himself as the subject) in an endless loop.

Erdal Inci has created a hypnotic series of GIFs that takes the concept of cloned motion to a truly eerie level. Often using images of himself in mundane situations, Inci transforms simple snapshots into entrancing video loops.