VIRTUAL ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

Water constitutes one of the deepest matrices of urban cultural pasts: an invisible infrastructure that has shaped settlements, morphologies and collective imaginaries for centuries. Today, however, this hydric heritage is exposed to a dual vulnerability: its material erosion under climatic stress and the gradual loss of cultural awareness of its role in the formation of the city. This contribution proposes a hydro-morphological reading of urban heritage that combines the analysis of historical water traces with speculative scenarios on climatic futures. Building upon ongoing research on the hydric system of Rome and its “minor waters” – residual basins, artificial lakes, underground cavities – the paper interprets water as a morphogenetic device capable of linking surface and subsurface, permanence and transformation. This analytical framework is complemented by a visual component informed by the project Evapor_azioni (Pisa Architecture Biennale, 2025), in which contemporary hydric landscapes are juxtaposed with future scenarios generated through artificial-intelligence-based visualization tools. These present/future diptychs do not aim to predict, but to reveal latent forms of evaporation, showing how the weakening of hydric networks reshapes urban geographies, margins, voids and emerging landscapes of scarcity. The research thus proposes a dual grammar of hydric heritage, composed of traces and evaporations, and argues that only by integrating morphological analysis with speculative imaging can we fully understand the fragile continuity between water memories and urban futures.