[İstanbul Technical University, Dept. of Architecture, Architectural Design Studio 5-6, Spring 024]
palaces somewhere
an architectural journey to the realm of ‘obruks’
Karapınar, Konya
[scroll down for participants and contributors]
Palace and the non-Descript
The studio is a call for an experiment, which will question the integrity, boundaries, shells, methods, organizations, systems, life, events, senses and sensations of the architectural act, in an area near Karapınar,* that is challenged by an undefinedness and that is incongruous to architecture; an area riddled with sinkholes that have sunk in the past, have recently withdrawn or will open in near future. Studio participants will pursue generous acts of architecture in the porous, loose, messy dust clouds of the undefined, the unmarked, the temporary; in a place where even the ground would like to disappear. Pursuing inventions of events, situations, images, textures and non-shells, a persistent and intense studio process will be envisaged by way of an abundance of experimentation; occasionally drawing on contemplation. Therefore, participants will be asked to make an active and productive contribution to such an experience. What are the concerns of architecture’s semantic geographies? With what sorts of concerns do places become part of this geography of senses? While questions like these promise to extract meanings of space from outside architecture’s autonomous fields, the quest for not reducing space to simply what happens and to keep aside what is proper to space will be addressed through 'field' strategies. 'Field' perspectives and methods in architecture come into play in order to [dis]organize the possible responses of an architecture whose borders and integrity are opened to questioning, to undefined spatialities, to the arbitrariness and disorganization of the context, through setting up ‘knots’ where climate, ground, systems and other geographical factors interact with architectural elements; instead of pursuing an impossible definition.
Methods and the Undefined
Although design attitudes based on images and textures have been with us for quite a long time, approaches for how these images will be selected, for what reason they will be used or how superficial uses will be overcome, and how they will be adapted to the rationale and dynamics of architecture are constantly up to transformations. Following the periods when scientific diagrams and images were used to capture some sort of connection with reality, purely 'discursive' and communicative attitudes for taking issue with, staging and aestheticizing currently predominates; not surprisingly, in a period when justifications mostly lost their credibility. Although such attitudes will always remain somewhat unconvincing, in the current era, producing completely artificial images and looking for ways to make these instrumental images a part of the design space / process appears as an interesting option. It seems obligatory to enter into the realm of methods, senses and justifications of completely artificially produced fields / textures / maps; rather than economies of found or intuited, chosen or imposing images. In order to deepen the mentioned problematic and develop architectural responses that dissolve the architectural program into the world of senses and sensuality, the studio will hybridize computer tools and rapid prototyping with the intuitive and real-time manual media, while attempting to draw on poetry, literature, theory and cinema, for a space defined by experience - meaning - form - space and fields. Architectural case studies / discussions, project presentations from previous terms and mini workshops will support the process as necessary.
Experiment series 1.
Cloud exercises //before the field trip: As an introduction to the understanding and methods of undefined, unbounded, non-descript, formless, fluid space and towards the space of porous and textural maps: experiments on invented clouds and multi-resolution and trans-scalar organizations (borders: regular clouds, familiar clouds, shapely clouds, surface characters: diminution, permeability, blurriness, etc.), 3D models - physical models - rapid prototyping, going back and forth between bitmap and hand-crafted textures.
Karapınar field trip and experiment series 2.
Micro-macro readings on systemic dynamics and political connections to encounter what belongs to and arises from the context. Attempts at clinging, penetrating, encountering...
Experiment series 3.
Clouds of meaning and the invention of architectural interventions / acts //Until the end of the semester: Event, meaning, time, cycles, actors, factors, place, space, context, study media, expressions.
Studio instructor: Nizam Onur Sönmez
*Special thanks to Nazlı Giriftinoğlu, Nursena Çolak, Arın Aydın and Mert Kaan Alptekin for their presentations, and our jury participants: Eda Yeyman, Derya Uzal, Fulya Eliyatkın, Nursena Çolak, Ali Paşaoğlu, Serim Aygen Kiştin
Studio participants
Bora Tezer
Cansın Akçer
Ece Özkan
Enes Daştan
Esin Güvensoy
Fatih Güçbilmez
Gözde İyem
Gülce Çobankara
Hasan Ali Yıldırım
İmge Taşçı
İsmail Göçmüş
Kemal Furkan Şahinoğlu
Melda Uyar
Selin Uzundağ
Semanur Öden
Sena Velioğlu
Şevval Akköylü
Yağız Kaan Özyurt
Yağız Özel
Yasemin Zorlubilek
Yavuz Selim Kaya