Sonic and Haptic Encounters with Industrial Heritage in Transition: An Exploratory Study of Bomonti, Istanbul

Industrial heritage is often evaluated through preserved fabric, new functions, and visual character, while the situated sensory consequences of reuse and adjoining redevelopment receive less attention. This exploratory pilot study examines sonic and haptic encounters along a predetermined route connecting industrial heritage, adaptive reuse, older streets, and high-rise redevelopment in Bomonti, Istanbul. The design-trained author-researchers familiar with the district conducted a paired sensewalk on a summer weekday afternoon, producing a photographic corpus, field notes with simple sketches, and continuous digital route recordings that also captured their in-walk conversation. The materials were jointly interpreted through reflexive cross-modal analysis. Sonic territories and haptic urbanism were used as complementary analytical dimensions, while sensory unevenness described cross-cutting differences among route settings. Traffic, commercial activity, cultural programming, courtyards, material transitions, slopes, thresholds, and controlled access shaped this particular encounter. These sensory cues became relevant to heritage meaning only when interpreted through spatial relations, historical knowledge, memory, present use, and access; they were not treated as heritage values in themselves. Experiential heritage value is therefore advanced as a situated interpretive lens rather than a general measurement. The study neither provides a causal account of urban transformation mechanisms nor establishes a stable sensory inventory of Bomonti; it offers a bounded approach for investigating how transformed heritage settings are perceived and interpreted.