Istanbul's Land Walls are managed today through two tools: a registered monument and a protective buffer zone drawn around it. Neither tool matches the nature of what it governs. The buffer zone is areal and static; the water infrastructure along the walls' cross-section is relational and processual: points where water changes state- emergence, storage, conveyance, distribution, production, discharge- form a network of nodes. This network's value lies not within its structures but in the transitions between them. A water well inside the buffer zone can be registered; the transition to the garden it feeds cannot, because current tools hold no such category. This basin network reading builds on Çorakbaş's (2013) proposal and Cankat's (2011) systemic outlook; the study's contribution is giving it concrete form, for the first time, on one segment. It cross-reads historical maps tracing water's path, photographs, late antique legal records on water-use permissions, and field research at Yedikule-Balikli, rendering the data visible through sections and plans. Reading the same area through two lenses, 'monument and buffer zone' and 'basin', produces a discrepancy; that discrepancy is the study's principal finding. In light of this, the comparison with Carcassonne and Diyarbakir-Hevsel is reframed at the scale of the fortified height, not the city: Istanbul's peninsula is not an exception among these cases but their most intensified instance, suggesting this reading may extend beyond one segment to other, similarly structured sites. The paper's contribution is not a finished design model but making visible the basin-scale relationships current conservation

Authors:
Rahime Hande Canbilen Omacan, Beykoz University, Türkiye
Aysegul Cankat, Universite de Grenoble, France

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Rahime Hande Canbilen Omacan, Asst. Prof. of Architecture at Beykoz University, focuses on historic urban topography and ecological heritage, integrating experiential learning into architectural studios and heritage conservation pedagogy.

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/hande-canbilen-omacan-45625732/

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https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rahime-Omacan

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