An integrated architectural approach to urban regeneration and public service enhancement at the Kadıköy municipality building

This study presents a design-research case study of an architectural competition proposal for the Kadıköy Municipality Building in Istanbul, investigating how civic architecture can simultaneously operate as ecological infrastructure and a platform for participatory governance within a rapidly densifying metropolitan context. Situated at the confluence of the Kurbağalıdere stream and the Bosphorus strait, Kadıköy presents intensifying urban pressures—including ecological fragmentation, the erosion of public space, and inadequate institutional transparency—that call for new models of public institutional design. Employing a tripartite analytical framework of conceptual emergence, morphological structure, and urban connectivity, the study interprets how a context-responsive, environmentally-informed morphological approach can reconcile architectural form with ecological and programmatic parameters. The proposal features the Yeşil Yapı Kabuğu (Green Building Shell), a vegetated roofscape that returns the building’s footprint to public use through three interlocking forms—Slope, Urban Terrace, and Hill—each responding to Bosphorus viewsheds and ecological corridor logic. Internally, a Municipal Services Street and a Municipal Services Development Center transform the building into a civic ecosystem promoting participatory governance. The study demonstrates that a design-research methodology grounded in multi-parametric site analysis can generate civic buildings that function simultaneously as regenerative urban infrastructure, democratic spatial apparatus, and ecological asset. The eco-civic urbanism model emerging from this case offers potential transferability to comparable densifying metropolitan contexts internationally.