2015
Istanbul
W1
Body in recycling loop in the urban context
The aim of the study is to develop different approaches and alternative spatial interventions through the idea of “urban re-use” by taking into account the body-space relationships as main interest area. The city of Istanbul will be used as a research laboratory.
Participants are expected to decode intrinsic nature of the project area and internalize the main concepts and transformed their ideas into new programs/meanings by re-using structures, buildings and gaps in this area.
Experimental spatial installations that are activating the bodies in urban space will be explored and their capabilities to provoke new ways of seeing or operating in the city will be emphasized.
The motto of the study will be framed around these keywords and their relations;
re-used, re-creation, re-evaluation, re-cycled material, event, consumed spaces, spaces added on, transformed space, different bodies | one space, performative body | performative city, choreographic spaces I choreographic bodies, flexibility | temporality, bodily space, participation.
W2
If a city would be completely abandoned, in no time (only 25 years) Nature would take over and re-establish its great presence. This is how resilient nature can be.
Never less a city does not need to be abandoned for Nature to take over. It is visible everyday, in the flowers blossoming through the asphalt, in the climbing plants covering old buildings, in the grass growing on roofs, seeded by birds.
On the other hand cities are generated by people, by their everyday routing, by the place where they meet, sit, talk, think. People play these actions in the most comfortable way. If it is not comfortable, they change it, they move to a different place. This is true to the point that design deals with what we see and feel, because a place can make a difference in people life. Design has to do with that individual experience of the body in that space. Nature has also always a key role into this.
We need to get the attention to the spaces in between the buildings, the infrastructures, the piers (like flowers through the asphalt)and generate new scenarios.
Why are these places underused or uncomfortable and what can we do to reverse the idea and generate resilient places as nature shows?
W3
Architects tend to think that what they create will live on forever. We design our buildings to be durable. But how solid is architecture?
Istanbul changed dramatically in the last decade. Economic growth resulted in a huge wealth accumulation, and this surplus was absorbed by investments in new buildings and infrastructure. When there was no space left in the city, old neighborhoods, parks, the seafront - everything was open for construction. This cycle of destruction and redevelopment was first described by Marx, and later by Marshall Bergman with the famous quote “all that is solid melts into air”
“Even the most beautiful and impressive bourgeois buildings and public works are disposable, capitalized for fast depreciation and planned to be obsolete, closer in their social functions to tents and encampments than to "Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, Gothic cathedrals"
Should we continue to business as usual, or should we accept the temporariness of architecture? What does this say about the way we as citizens see the city-how does it affect our memories about it? The loss of buildings is visible but what about the social aspect-the invisible relationships a historic neighborhood creates in design that continued for centuries?
The workshop will look into areas of conflict around Karaköy and Galata, mapping the invisible, and searching for potentials and creative solutions to address this cycle of destruction.
W5
As archeology is the science which thinks about cultural development of humankind in history, our ECOWEEK Istanbul 2015 theme Contemporary Archeology asks for today’s challenges regarding sustainability, architecture and urban design. Why is the building or square neglected? What urban drivers shaped it? What happens if we give an abandoned building to its neighborhood? How would the context itself create its center? What are the hidden values and potentials of space and atmosphere? Although we think about architecture or urban design while creating space we have to combine threads of urban, social, cultural and ecological topics. We have to interweave aspects of history and future, inside and outside, necessities and excesses, while always trying to get another perspective on the track. In the end a project should be conscious, respond to its fringe, respect the neighborhood and answer the questions, which it asked before the intervention.
W4
Augmented Modernism
Hacking the İMÇ complex
The aim of the proposed workshop is to create consciousness of a non tabula-rasa approach in order to change our built environment and create a catalogue of architectural small-scale strategies to “hack” and/or “augment” the potential of the İMÇ complex.
The workshop is basically divided in three different phases: exploring, criticizing and hacking.
Exploring:
The first day will be dedicated to observe the area and the IMC building.
The architectural and urban spaces will be explored and analyzed from different point of view: commercial and social activities, informal uses of private and public spaces, modernist key elements.
Criticizing:
During the second step the students will organize the collected information to use them as tools for the design phase.
Hacking:
During this final step students will be guided through the design process to acquire a re-use strategy, and to revitalize a specific place inside the building or nearby.
W6
Superpool
Workshop Leaders:
Walkability in Istanbul
How easy is it to walk in Istanbul on a daily basis? Does your neighborhood offer amenities and transportation nodes within walking distances?
The ability to walk in modern metropolises becomes more and more vital – an important indicator of public health and, therefore, of land value. Walking may only be a basic form of exercise but, according to studies, is still enough to decrease the occurrence of serious health conditions like diabetes, obesity and heart diseases.
Through an intensive mapping workshop, participants will be asked to explore a neighborhood and map its amenities and transportation nodes. The results of the research will be analyzed along with demographic and other data in Geographical Information System (GIS) software and then visualized in order to build an argument about the neighborhoods of Istanbul.
W7
Architecture is itself a recyclable material that we have always known how to recycle. What is new, today, is that Re-cycling is not just an economically, politically and anthropologically correct device, but also one of the most sophisticated and uncanny expressive research forms used by contemporary architects. It is the mechanism that transforms a functional reuse into a creative act, a functional device into the genesis of a multi-layered architectural work, into a process of continuous encroachment with art and contemporary visual languages.
The process of recovering spaces implies the subversion of the relationship between the buildings and their urban context. On the one hand contemporary urban expansion seems to have reduced the importance of the growth of the city on itself, and on the other hand it has laid down a huge amount of "materials" towards which we can no longer remain silent.
The reuse of abandoned structures is as much needed – given the current economic conditions – as “problematic” for those who would take possession of them: the new users can no longer see in these structures the solidification of everyday memories, sometimes even tragic ones. One of the objectives of the workshop is to strip off the burning load of memories from the walls, thus making them available to a process of re-appropriation.
W8
SO? Architecture&Ideas
How public is the pavement?
The workshop will be about most ignored yet over-used piece of the urban landscape; pavements. The pavements are the evidents of what is happening/ has happened in the city, they reflect the ever-ending tension between public and private, legal and illegal, urban and rural, etc. They are the smallest public element that is subject to major power relations. The case study area will be Beyoğlu district, where the pavements are particularly inconsistent, with 5 different sections from different neighborhoods. The method of the workshop will initially base on documenting and mapping the existing situation of the pavements, while the outcomes are supposed to reveal the urban pattern which is surprisingly varying throughout the district.
W9
New air for old town. Göztepe case.
Latitude 40°58'46.18"N
Longitude 29° 4'0.32"E
Mapping of the centre of Göztepe will reveal multiple layers of history colliding together in one space. The centre of the area is located on the street, named as Tütüncü Mehmed Effendi, named after “Tobacco Seller” Mehmed Effendi who settled in the area in 18th century. Since then the area flourished; it became full of characteristic late Ottoman wooden houses and with their large green gardens. Today, we witness that the demands of already 3rd generation of urban renewal are somehow deleting traces of history while abandoning the public structures: a deprived bazaar and decommissioned train station stand there empty right in the centre of the area.
In this study, we will see different buildings, objects, materials, textures. But not only that. We will also identify traces of public space, unbuilt volumes which were/are there to guarantee movement of people and goods, penetration of sunlight and sufficient amount of air to breath. The mapping should give us an insight if the historically formed structures of volumes and voids are able to embrace the dynamics of rapidly transforming city. In this intensive 4 day exercise we will see urban renewal as an opportunity to insert larger volumes of air into the existing city fabric, and therefore produce new unexpected qualities. Current law of FAR not exceeding 2,07 gives a perfect framework to engage the history of the site with new possible structures and most importantly with new configurations of public space.
W10
Recycling Blank Façades for the Vulnerable
In a randomly chosen piece of urban environment, one can easily meet some blank façades. Even though there are some attempts to use these façades, they are mostly two dimensional artistic creations.
Besides, in a randomly chosen piece of urban environment, one can easily meet some vulnerable beings. Cats and dogs on the streets, kids, homeless people etc.
Can these walls and façades create/inhabit/host a space for these vulnerable beings? Can these walls and façades function as a shelter, for cats and dogs on the streets, kids, homeless people etc.
The workshop is going to have three phases: 1. mapping the blank façades in a given environment, 2. mapping the window of vulnerability and the vulnerables 3. creating design solutions with recycling blank façades and vulnerables.
Can these blank façades create social solutions?