Pop Up Park Istanbul is a research by design and doing project seeking to find an answer to the question of how the public spaces in busy contemporary cities can be designed, programmed, and used.

“Pop Up Park Istanbul” seeks to overcome this problem by connecting the design and use of public spaces with local cultural traditions, bringing the sense of community common in rural life to modern city life. The main objective of the project is to give back public space its true meaning, its raison d'être to help create a more livable, inclusive, and sustainable city.

“Tradition as a Making Tool | Pop Up Park Istanbul” is a continuation of our research and our findings from the first phase, but now implemented on a larger scale and in a new location. The project has been developed under the influence of the 2020 Covid-19 worldwide pandemic The main question still remains; How can we use tradition as a facilitator to transform monofunctional public spaces into collective, multi-functional, and value-added spaces to create more inclusive, livable, and greener cities?

*This project was created in cooperation with our Dutch partner Space Crafters. We were one of the 4 selected projects from Turkey for StimuleringsFonds Open Call: Turkey, Russia, Egypt, Morocco, funded by Creative Industries Fund NL.

Social impact assessment of Pop Up Park Istanbul

As a team, we wanted to map the temporary and lasting impacts on permanent and temporary users of our design approach, the public space elements we produced, and the park we created. And we are happy to share our insights with you.

Social impact is the effect on various people that happens as a result of an action, activity, project, program, or policy. Using the impact thinking approach for our Project enabled us to observe, manage, and measure the changes, either positive or negative, created in the way of living, culture, common beliefs, awareness levels, and claims of the inhabitants of Istanbul. 

The social impact assessment aims to measure and report transparently the social value created by the activities carried out in the scope of our two-phase project, through the changes created for the project’s beneficiaries. To this end, we designed a process that from the first phase involves different stakeholder groups.