Research
Istanbul: A Way Out
2025 - Venice, Italy
Traditional disaster planning asks whether buildings will stand. Istanbul: A Way Out asks what happens when they do — and the city still cannot move. In a densely built, largely unplanned megacity like Istanbul, the aftermath of an earthquake can be defined not by structural failure alone, but by the accumulation of ordinary urban elements: a parked car, a protruding bay window, a lamp post on a narrow pavement, a cluster of street furniture. These everyday objects, invisible in normal life, can become lethal obstacles the moment emergency services need to reach survivors or residents need to escape. The project was born out of the 2023 Turkey earthquake and the unresolved seismic risk that continues to hang over Istanbul. It proposes that post-earthquake survival relies as much on movement and accessibility as it does on structural integrity — and that disaster resilience in a divided city cannot be separated from the socio-economic conditions that shape its streets.
overview
project narrative
Traditional disaster planning asks whether buildings will stand. Istanbul: A Way Out asks what happens when they do — and the city still cannot move. In a densely built, largely unplanned megacity like Istanbul, the aftermath of an earthquake can be defined not by structural failure alone, but by the accumulation of ordinary urban elements: a parked car, a protruding bay window, a lamp post on a narrow pavement, a cluster of street furniture. These everyday objects, invisible in normal life, can become lethal obstacles the moment emergency services need to reach survivors or residents need to escape. The project was born out of the 2023 Turkey earthquake and the unresolved seismic risk that continues to hang over Istanbul. It proposes that post-earthquake survival relies as much on movement and accessibility as it does on structural integrity — and that disaster resilience in a divided city cannot be separated from the socio-economic conditions that shape its streets.
Istanbul: A Way Out is an urban research project that maps the thresholds between the city's formal and informal fabrics, the passages, courtyards, and light-filled voids that constitute an alternative urban geography. The project proposes a series of spatial interventions that amplify these in-between conditions.
project info
details
process
development
Developed by an international team of young architects and researchers — Eren Sezer, Nour Fneich, Andrei Calin Teodorescu, Egemen Sezer, Raşit Eren Cangür, Sonya Ragimova, and Nicolo Carlini — the project employed a data-driven, AI-assisted methodology to make visible what is usually overlooked. At its core was a YOLOv (You Only Look Once) object detection model, trained on 3000+ Google Street View images to identify and map the physical barriers that could slow down emergency response: parked vehicles, overhanging structures, encroachments on pavement, and street clutter. To ground this in the social complexity of the city, the team selected three neighbourhoods with sharply contrasting urban and economic conditions: Dolapdere, densely populated and largely unplanned; Ortaköy, historically layered with moderate planning; and Göztepe, a recently planned, low-density, high-income area. Using a grid-based risk scoring system, they calculated a Total Risk Score for each zone — measuring the proportion of obstructed streets, sidewalks, and open spaces relative to the total area. The results confirmed a direct correlation: narrower, densely occupied streets in lower-income neighbourhoods carry significantly higher post-disaster risk than the wider, open roads of planned districts.
gallery
project images
awards
recognition
Venice Architectural Biennale 2025
STRAND : Crosscutting of Horizons International Architecture Exhibition 2025