Suspended in the air above Ortaköy Square, Istanbul, ‘Sky Garden’ not only introduces greenery to one of the busiest spot in the city, but also provides pedestrians with shade and seating.
One of the Turkish capital’s most touristic and crowded areas, Ortaköy Square was not an easy location for designing an urban garden. Placing it on the ground would take away space for a sidewalk and make the square even more dense. Instead, the architects from SO? came up with the idea of installing the garden above pedestrians’ heads. ‘Sky Garden’ consists of pots with variety of plants hanging from the geometric metal construction.
Aside from offering shade and a place to sit, the installation features a mechanism that allows take a closer look at the pots by moving them up and down. Speaking about their project, the architects say: “We consider public installations as a tool to question the architect’s power over design. When the visitor is able to change the installation, the architect is no longer able to control the form, up to a certain point. For us, it is a challenging experience to expand the borders of control even with small gestures like in this project, while the temporary installation urges to transform an established public space.”
