Divan Kuruçeşme Venue / GAD Architecture + Metex Design Group

The restoration of historical architecture in Istanbul has been a fraught issue in the modern period. Istanbul is a city with a 6000-year-old history dating to the Neolithic period with layers upon layers of archaeological remains. Modern architecture and urban planning have often had to contend with these layers causing great disruptions to exist historical and archaeological traces of the city's past. The embedded geological, structural, and cultural past of Istanbul has in most cases been roughly repurposed and often completely destroyed in the modern period. The needs of the modern city, especially roads for automobiles and new dense urban commercial centers meant that prominent buildings from the Byzantine and Ottoman eras were largely erased from the cityscape. Buildings with architectural value such as the Ottoman İncili Köşk near the Topkapi Palace or the Direklerarası Byzantine era arcade in Fatih were razed in the 20th century due to the growth of the city's roads.