Landscapes of Superimposition on the Edge of Mediterranean Sea

The study presents a landscape design project with a set of preliminary morphological analyses. Karaalioglu Park, in South Anatolia, is squeezed between a dense urban fabric and the irrevocably transformed edge of Mediterranean Sea. Globalisation, rapid urbanisation as much as other sociocultural imperatives and natural processes paved the foundations for dilapidation of the park. The project cautiously revives the principles of classicism through the forms of modernism in order to achieve a manifestation of an ecologically sensitive and societally relevant place making on a valuable yet problematic green belt. Urban design principles of the City States, which are the symbols of democracy of the Hellenistic Era, are reinterpreted in this urban park (including the town hall) in the centre of Antalya, an Antique city. Urban elements of Antiquity, such as Promenade, Stoa, Bouleuterion, and Prytaneion are respectively transformed into the main alley, cultural axis, arcades, amphitheatre and the town-hall. Besides, the gridal plan, which is another reminiscent of the antiquity, is multi-layered in accordance with the growth and transformation of this particular landscape. Thus, two different gridirons, first referring to the original landscape of the Early Republican Era, and other to the proposed landscape, are overlapped with an angle in order to echo the ongoing superimposition as a means of re-constructing the history of the city. Thus, the project provides a new medium for public life and democratic interaction in an ecologically sensitive landscape within the very heart of a densely built city laid along a Mediterranean waterfront. The boundaries of the disciplines of landscape, architecture, urban design and conservation are questioned with particular reference to Karaalioglu Park in Antalya.