THE FLOWER OF ISTANBUL
The new and futuristic control tower of one of the busiest airports in the world is inspired by the tulip, the symbol of Turkey’s biggest city. It was designed by the Italian Pininfarina firm in collaboration with the multinational AECOM company
WE ARRIVE AT ISTANBUL’S NEW AIRPORT WITH THE SUN AT ITS HEIGHT. Minivans laden with journalists from all over the world drive through the city’s outermost suburbs and head into a small strip of countryside that separates it from the Black Sea. The airport is heralded by a maze of road junctions that will have to handle an estimated 200 million passengers a year. After the last slip road an enormous expanse of earth that has been turned over, mixed up and flattened comes into sight. The vast construction zone covers an area of 76 square kilometres, and the closer we come to it the more evident it seems from the traffic of people, vehicles and cranes, and from the scale of the investment in intelligence and capital, that the government is putting a piece of its own future at stake here. Even though it will be in operation shortly, the access road has not yet been tarmacked, but a large
SELF-SUFFICIENT IN ENERGY, THE NEW TURKISH AIRPORT WILL BE ABLE TO HANDLE 200 MILLION PASSENGERS A YEAR
main block from which the terminals branch out seems to be finished. The convoy arrives on the east side, where the first planes will dock. Within a few days the airport will be officially opened with sofastwebme national flights, and it looks like becoming one of the busiest on the planet. The showpiece of this new infrastructure is the control tower designed by the Italian firm Pininfarina with the multinational AECOM company. And this building really is a flower in the airport’s buttonhole, because the solution that won out over the ones proposed by some of the most important designers in the sector harks back to the tulip, symbol of Istanbul. When we arrive under the futuristic tower, standing by itself on the plain in the middle of the runways, there is a cold wind blowing from the north. At that point, watching the clouds scudding rapidly to the south over those lines and those forms, the choice becomes clear. And few could have taken up the challenge more effectively than the Turinese studio. The image of
THE IMAGE OF THE TOWER CAN BE FOUND EVERYWHERE IN THE CITY: AT BUS STOPS AND IN THE SHOPPING MALLS
this tower, which is already the emblem of the airport, can be found everywhere in the city, at bus stops, on walls and in shopping malls. Yet, when I talk to the taxi driver who takes me into the centre the following day, he doesn’t know where the new airport is going to be, and I have to show him it on the phone. Perhaps the people here are used to living in a city undergoing perpetual transformation.
Another recent major work is the tunnel under the strait, linking Europe and Asia. Yet habits do not appear to change as quickly as the city, and in the evening the Bosporus is as lively as ever. People queue at the landing stages to cross the mere two kilometres that separate the two halves of a city that has been staring at itself in the mirror for two thousand years. And just like everywhere else water fascinates and attracts. In the evening the shores are crowded. Young and old are out for a stroll, fishing from the many bridges and quays or eating pretzels and admire the skyline of their city in the light of a unique sunset. ○