2026




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Anatomy of Inspiration

I was a keynote speaker at the 18th Istanbul Biennial (2025) for the Anatomy of Inspiration talk series!

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Tactical Urbanism Now!
Our project From Soil to Soil: Stitching the Food Cycle through Landscapes and Cultures, with Fernando Sanchez for the Tactical Urbanism Now! competition by TerraViva, was selected as one of the finalists!

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ABOUT
Zeynep Igmen is an architect and researcher specializing in sustainable and socially just architectural and urban practices, based in London and Istanbul. Her work engages with cultural discourses, environmental history, territorial conflicts across land- and waterscapes, and their intersections with material and immaterial cultures. She also explores spatial tectonics and hands-on, low-tech making. In parallel, she contributes to the Latinization of Ottoman Turkish documents and literature.

The Bartlett School of Architecture UCL 2024-2025
MA Architecture and Historic Urban Environments 

          thesis titled “A Practice of Fishing along the Bosphorus: Mapping Dalyans as Sites of Collective Making and Memory”

Uskudar University 2024-2025
MA Sufi Culture and Literature

           final project titled “Tawakkul, Vigour, and Building in the Narrative of Prophet Noah”

Istanbul Bilgi University 2019-2023
BArch Architecture (High Honours)

London College of Music 2007-2022
Classical Piano, Grade 8


Curriculum Vitae
CONTACT Email




2026

Figure 01 A bulk of waste in a construction site in Istanbul, photograph by the author (2024).

Environmental Impact of an Urban Transformation:
Deviant Demolitions on Bagdat Street


This research investigates the environmental and socio-political consequences of Türkiye’s contemporary urban transformation by tracing the story of Bagdat Street in Istanbul; once a coastal summer retreat, now overwhelmed by demolition, concrete, and dust. Enacted in the aftermath of devastating earthquakes, the 2012 Law on the Transformation of Areas Under Disaster Risk (Law No. 6306) was intended to protect life in a seismic region. Yet its implementation, especially in high-value areas like Bagdat Street, reveals how risk-prevention rhetoric became a cover for speculative redevelopment and urban profit.

Over the years, Bagdat Street’s layered history of wooden mansions and gardened flats gave way to taller, denser constructions. When the Disaster Risk Law offered high land share returns to flat owners, the logic of transformation shifted from necessity to value extraction (Koylan, 2018). Residents were incentivized to demolish even structurally sound buildings, aligning themselves with contractors under the promise of prestige and security. However, this profit-driven model eclipsed ecological and social considerations. Environmental Law (No. 2872) was often bypassed, and the process became marked by improvisation, loopholes, and political ambiguity.

This transformation carries consequences that unfold across time. In the short term, the streets are disrupted by demolition dust, asbestos release, excavation pits, and the constant passage of heavy machinery. These immediate effects disturb daily life, pose safety hazards, and affect respiratory health. As construction drags on, mid-term consequences emerge: scattered waste, blocked sidewalks, and prolonged exposure to noise and dust; conditions that persist for months, even years, reshaping the rhythm of the neighbourhood. In the long term, these accumulated effects deepen: air pollution, particularly PM2.5 particles linked to chronic illness and premature death; irreversible ecological damage; and the erosion of spatial memory, as architectural traces and communal patterns vanish under concrete. The transformation doesn’t just replace buildings; it reconfigures experience, affects mental well-being, and normalizes pollution and risk.

Drawing from legal texts, municipal air quality data, and resident testimonies, the essay reveals how environmental safeguards were diluted over time. The language of “sustainable development” in revised laws offers only a symbolic nod to balance, while the ground reality is one of unchecked growth. 

The case of Bagdat Street illustrates a broader condition: the transformation of Türkiye’s urban fabric under the guise of safety, but in practice dominated by speculative urgency and weakening regulation. Environmental degradation, inequality, and loss of memory are not side effects but symptoms of a system that values speed and profit over participation and care. The essay argues for a reorientation: toward participatory processes that foreground public health, memory, and ecological responsibility as essential dimensions of urban life. In doing so, it joins voices like that of architect and activist Mücella Yapıcı in resisting the deviant logic of top-down urbanism; one that, were Marx alive today, might compel him to rewrite Das Kapital (140journos, 2021).


Figure 02 An aerial view of the coast, mansions by the front, new development at the back, with the concrete infill along the shore, after 1980s, (Çalıkoğlu, no date).


Figure 03 A bulk of waste in a construction site in Istanbul (Photograph by the author, 2024).


Figure 04 A short film, video by the author (2024)



140journos. (2021, October 13). Das capital [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvOXnDD7epY&t=799s

Çalıkoğlu, M. E. (n.d.). Caddebostan sahilinin havadan görünümü – An aerial view of Caddebostan coast [Photograph]. SALT Research. https://archives.saltresearch.org/handle/123456789/7149

Koylan, D. (2018). İstanbul Bağdat Caddesi ve yakın çevresinde kentsel dönüşüm: 2012–2018 dönemi [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü. https://tez.yok.gov.tr/UlusalTezMerkezi/tezDetay.jsp?id=FHt_9cYy0BxPDtt9_bcqZA&no=ZI2b4Nf8i7tJ0nejcBqYMw

Mevzuat Bilgi Sistemi. (n.d.). Afet riski altındaki alanların dönüştürülmesi hakkında kanun, Kanun No. 6306, 15 Aralık 2012. https://www.mevzuat.gov.tr/mevzuat?MevzuatNo=16849&MevzuatTur=7&MevzuatTertip=5

Mevzuat Bilgi Sistemi. (n.d.). Çevre Kanunu, Kanun No. 2872, 11 Ağustos 1983. https://www.mevzuat.gov.tr/mevzuat?MevzuatNo=2872&MevzuatTur=1&MevzuatTertip=5

Odman, A. (2019). Asbest tehlike haritası: Ortalık toz duman. Beyond Istanbul: Urban Political Ecology, Special Edition, 70–77. https://www.academia.edu/38316744/Asbest_Tehlike_Haritas%C4%B1_Ortali%CC%87k_Toz_Duman

Bali, A. (2020). Vapurlarıyla İstanbul. İstanbul: İBB Yayınları.

Cantok, B. (1944). Boğaziçinde seyrü sefer. In İstanbul Ansiklopedisi (Vol. 6, pp. 2888–2896). https://istanbulansiklopedisi.org/handle/rek/7042

Fabrika Fotoğrafhanesi. (1924–1928). Seyr-i Sefain İdaresi ve Şirket-i Hayriye ile ilgili fotoğraflar. https://archives.saltresearch.org/handle/123456789/208855

Gürpınar, H. S. (2021). Nimetşinas. İstanbul: Kapra Yayıncılık.

Vapur iskelesinden bilet alan insanlar - People buying tickets at pier. (n.d.). https://archives.saltresearch.org/handle/123456789/123006

Walsh, R. (1838). A residence at Constantinople, during a period including the commencement, progress, and termination of the Greek and Turkish revolutions (2nd ed., Vol. 1). London: Richard Bentley.