Spatial stratification and urban memory at CAPA Health Campus

As a part of the city, medical campuses in the historical city centers have served the citizens for a long time with health care and medical education purposes. This study aims at identifying the urban, functional, and spatial sociological problems that arise with the physical and spatial dysfunction of such health campuses and creating solutions to them. Plus, planning and filling the design criteria gap for architectural disciplines are also the purposes of the study. Health structures should be renewed in accordance with the current conditions and constantly updated in terms of function and space to maintain world-class education, research, and service quality. Existing health facilites must be spatially flexible and structurally durable to meet this requirement. If fail to keep up with this dynamic process, hospital buildings become dysfunctional over time. Therefore, these health service areas, which are generally located in city centers, are renewed or re-established at a different location. Such a change or transformation may have positive/negative impacts on the city and its citizens. Furthermore, these urban areas host a part of everyday life and have an important place in the health-social life of the individuals, as well as in the memory of society. With the disappearance of the collective memory of the society between the transformed space and the individual within the scope of renewal/transformation, the urban area imagined with the health function has the potential to change. There is a need for design decisions created in accordance with the disciplines of architecture and environmental planning, which ensure the continuity of urban service areas without impeding the right of the citizens to receive service. Accordingly, to reveal the role of sociological concepts (collective and spatial memory) in the decisions of architectural and typological renewal of health structures, a comprehensive literature survey was conducted on the relevant concepts and issues. Capa Health Campus in the Historical Peninsula of Istanbul was chosen as the study area. Firstly, the healthcare facility of the Historic Peninsula in the past were examined chronologically. Secondly, the unique urban and architectural features of the campus and the renewal (stratification) process were comprehensively addressed. Based on the urban and architectural findings obtained from the literature and the users of the campus by the survey method, design proposals for the health buildings that will be renovated in the future are presented.