Meydan is Turkish for a market place or meeting place. Since the “Meydan” opened in Istanbul in late summer, as the first ever “shopping square,” it heralds a new generation of shopping centers. It is the green center and the soul of a newly created district of the city on the Bosporus.
Famous architects FOA developed the prototype of an innovative trading property
The architecture is going to set trend setting, innovative accents
In early March 2005, METRO Group Asset Management invited five internationally operating architecture firms to Istanbul to work on site on the prototype for a modern shopping square.
Two or three representatives of each firm of architects were on site during the workshop, remaining in contact with their head offices via Internet and telephone. The architects got together every evening to discuss solutions and problems and to give presentations of the first designs. On the fourth day of the workshop it was time to decide which model would be built, and who should come up with the most convincing design but the only one of the five architect firms with little previous experience in typical retail architecture. The design by the young firm Foreign Office Architects, FOA, was chosen as winner not just by the representatives of METRO Group Asset Management, but also by the other competitors.
FOA, established by Alejandro Zaera Polo and Farshid Moussavi, are renowned for their extraordinary urban landscapes. With Yokohama International Port Terminal, FOA created one of the most unusual buildings of the last decade.
FOA was also involved in the master plan for the London 2012 Olympics. The FOA architects belong to that generation of young architects which has brought about a new orientation, in theory and in practice. They are renowned for being innovative, lateral thinking architects, who very carefully analyze the space they will be building on. FOA proved this during the workshop as they analyzed the local conditions and drew up the first abstract plans. The result is an open shopping square that unites all the different levels with a series of folds. This creates a flowing connectivity of space which naturally guides the visitors through the various shopping worlds while reacting to respective context.
