31 Mayıs, 2009

possibilities of activites and the recent case of Skateistan





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPlnGa5ubVg

within the above youtube link, you will get introduced to Skateistan. this is the issue of changing the urban environment and the daily traumas with the help of a neutral activity. this issue is an issue of humanity definitely. This is design/game/architecture/social behavior/ culture and networking.

We as a team tried to develop a triathlon project in the city of Mostar 2 years before. the recent realisation was a tryout triathlon via artists from a local center. Some of you may remember my beginning links and texts about the Mostar Triathlon. Unfortunately sponsorship did not work out so effectively until today and still political unstability as well as hard to solve details about implementation kept this project as a conceptual work and a tryout via art.

thus I congratulate Skateistan and all the people for this initiative who took responsibility and courage. they are having an ongoing costruction currently and aim to finish up the park in the end of this year. great!

All the neutral activities within post crisis locations and minds...
sante!

for more information about SKATEISTAN and their recent supporters Architecture for Humanity here are the links:
http://skateistan.org/
http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/
http://gamechangers.architectureforhumanity.org/proposals

I received an invitation

Ensci, one of the most well known design school in Paris is having its 2008-2009 graduation series. well i write series since each representative to a final jury is preparing a whole session of exhibit. better not to miss! Here below is Alexandre Mussche's invitation for those who are interested in services, new media and new planning tools for an upgraded quality of life. French language is a must to follow up the discussions and presentation but i still believe design has a common language in most cases.



J'ai le plaisir de vous inviter à la soutenance de mon diplôme le Mercredi 3 juin 2008 à l'Ensci. La présentation commence à 9h et se déroulera sur la matinée :


- Book (série de projets réalisés depuis 2003)

- Images de la frontière linguistique (mémoire de fin d'étude) : histoire de la façon dont à été imagée la géographie des langues en Belgique accompagné d'une série d'expérimentations cartographiques (sous la direction de Marie-Haude Caraës). Expérimentations cartographiques et mémoire visibles sur http://frontiere.wordpress.com

- Micro-radio (projet de diplôme): en s'appuyant sur les usages des récepteurs radio, le projet expérimente sur le territoire, des services de diffusion de contenu sonore à l'échelle micro-locale (sous la direction de Jun Yasumoto).

18 Mayıs, 2009

Europe on map!

As Europe keeps changing/shifting its borders/limits, it makes it more interesting issue to examine. I have produced a large amount of research within the curatorial work for the exhibition Archilab for the year 2008. This detailed research also made me produce a lot of maps that you may see below in a lower resolution. I believe to see Europe among all the different classifications, and focuses creates a new geography. This makes it as interesting as the ongoing question of extension fr a greater Europe/turkey in Europe?/Europe until mount Ararat/etc.

however people forget about the history, and the movements within the history while shaping Europe all the time. this given name had all the time in a shift and cannot really defined with a given policy of today. union is a matter of collaboration as long as, the products in return makes the defined territory part of the global network.

so lets have a look at the Europe from 2008.

INTERREG 3B TERRITORIES MAP

The regional policy of the European Union targets the cohesion of the whole area, motivated by the disparities between the 27 member countries and their 268 regions. It has three main objectives – convergence, regional competitiveness and employment – within the European Territorial Co-operation Objective. This focuses on cross-border co-operation through joint local and regional initiatives and interregional collaborations. The structural funds and instruments, which support the main objectives of this regional policy, are the European Fund for Regional Development (ERDF), the European Structural Funds (ESF) and the Cohesion Fund. The European Territorial Co-operation Objective is based on the community initiative INTERREG (Inter Regional). It focuses on various priorities, from transport, tourism and culture, spatial planning and urban issues to employment, the information society, and peace. Under this wide-ranging regional policy, INTERREG (in the name of regional development and cohesion) promotes various types of collaboration projects between the European regions and EU member regions and border states. These aim to bring economic, social and environmental developments and improvements to the entire EU. The INTERREG programme is part of the European Spatial Development programme and was the key tool for the application of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), adopted in 1999.

URBAN INITIATIVE

The URBAN community initiative was developed, within the regional
policy remit for urban issues, as an instrument operating within
the cohesion policy. It is dedicated to the regeneration of urban areas
and crisis areas. The URBAN initiative demands a high degree of involvement
on the local level.

MEGAS

After the EU enlargement in 2007, about 70 major cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants dominate the European urban system. About 20 percent of the EU population in 27 member states live in these cities. This shows that European cities have diverse potentials, and the “mega” cities (or “metropolitan growth areas”) represent potentials and capabilities across the EU within the current geographical context. Among them, the cities of Paris and London are considered the global nodes of the European Union. They are the EU’s main global protagonists, due to their economic, social, and cultural capacities.

DEMOGRAPHIC DECLINE AND MEGAS

The overlap between metropolitan growth regions and population decline clearly demonstrates the shift in migration, skills, knowledge and economic strength towards the European engines, the strong metropolitan growth regions and towards the locations of the European Union considered to have the most potential. As a result, one may note
a centralised Europe in terms of population and production and the contrasting peripheral conditions within the whole.

TEN AND MEGAS

The Trans-European Networks for Transportation (TEN) obviously concentrate on the European Union’s main cities and regions. The map also underlines the importance of several injection points in order to create more nodes and better connectivity. This improvement of the infrastructure will provide the basis for stronger cohesion in the future. By implementing the transportation priorities in the EU territory, the potentials of the megas will also be increased.

PORTS AND MEGAS

The main commercial ports in the European Union are economically important gateways. However, the current overlap in the regions and cities, with due regard to their potential as metropolitan growth areas, is important. In general, it may be noted that the many potential and strong “mega” cities are in zones that include harbour areas, especially in the west, northwest and southwest regions of the EU. By contrast, there is a lack of commercial ports and economic power around the acceding EU nation states in southeast Europe.

Source: All the maps and the definitions are made by the author Demet Mutman and previews are taken directly from the final catalogue of The Archilab Europe Strategic Architecture 2008.

13 Mayıs, 2009

a new blog for exchanging information about urban age award istanbul 2009!


urban age istanbul odulu ile ilgili bilgi alisverisi icin artik yeni bir blog var!

goz atin! / check it out!
http://urbanageawardistanbul.wordpress.com/

11 Mayıs, 2009

Becoming Istanbul


Exhibition
16. May 2009 - 30. June 2009
DAZ Taut Saal

OPENING 15.05.2009

18 PM Short Lectures, DAZ_Taut Saal
Opening speech: S.E. Ahmet Acet, Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey
Lecture by Pelin Dervis, Director Garanti Gallery, Istanbul.
Followed by short-lectures of the architects from the exhibition ‘7 Architects from 7 Hills’, presented by Dr. Suha Ozkan.
Speakers: Emre Arolat, Can Cinici, Mehmet Kutukcuoglu & Ertug Ucar Teget Architectural Office), Sevki Pekin, Nevzat Sayin, Murat & Melkan Tabanlioglu Tabanlioglu Architects), Han Tumertekin.

20 PM Opening of the exhibition
Speakers:
Ingeborg Junge-Reyer, Mayor of Berlin and Senator for Urban Development
Mustafa Pulat, Consul General of the Republic of Turkey
Ute Weiland, Deputy Director of Alfred Herrhausen Society
Pelin Dervis, Curator of the exhibition ‚Becoming Istanbul‘, Director Garanti Gallery, Istanbul
Dr. Suha Ozkan, Curator of the exhibition ‚7 Architects from 7 Hills‘, Chairman World Architecture Community


This exhibition does not describe Istanbul. Neither does it depict its history, its contemporary architectural environment which is gradually becoming more animated and productive, its complex social and economic structure or its becoming the focus of a popular culture of almost unparalleled richness. The exhibition is prepared with the purpose of visualizing Istanbul’s present state.

It consists of an interactive audiovisual database on contemporary Istanbul and a 16 - minute complementary film titled ‘Mapping Istanbul’. Both attempts to look at Istanbul from multiple perspectives and free of all the familiar clichés. In doing this, the database, instead of producing and placing new stereotypes opposite those clichés, forms its own structure by instrumentalizing the clichés themselves. Media accessed through includes works by artists, architectural projects, videos, photographs, cartoons and essays. Users accessing these works produced in the last 10 years will have the chance to perceive the conditions and actors forming today’s Istanbul. There are 408 visual groups under the 80 sub-headings featured on the database. More than 7000 visuals were accumulated for the project. ‘Mapping Istanbul’ constitutes an important source supporting the understanding of the city and the contemporary view the exhibition presented, at times completely overturning cliché judgments.

Becoming Istanbul
Istanbul was not always Istanbul. It has been Byzantium, Constantinopolis, in the mid-Byzantine period it was simply Polis, in the Ottoman period it was Kostantiniyye, Ýslambol and Dersaadet, and many other things; but it was never only Istanbul. Each toponymic change is a manifestation of radical differentiation in the urban space and a change in its social meaning. From the beginning of the 19th century on, the traditional cosmopolitanism, the plurality of which was formed from the sum of a series of fixed singularities, faced erosion. Although ideological engagements pointed in the opposite direction, the new cosmopolitanism of the city was slowly being constructed in place of the crumbling traditional politanism. The city of fixed communities and statuses, where inflow and outflow was strictly controlled now set out to become a city shaped by the countless parameters of individualities, preferences, expressions, interests, groupings and separations. The city obtained the pluralism of a metropolis. It became an environment of “spontaneous freedom” where the oppression of recurrent totalitarian orientations has collided with the common pluralism of the metropolis. This characteristic of the city is becoming increasingly evident. The ironic aspect of the process is how this modern metropolis singularized its name although it opened itself up to the outward expression of pluralities. Today, for everyone, it is only Istanbul. During the phase of homogenization, which began in the 1920s and the phase of becoming plural, pluralist and cosmopolitan which began in the 1980s, the city forgot its countless old names. It generalized the name Istanbul, which was least political, least religious and least ethnical among the names in use. It became Istanbul. It became a category where countless existences and meanings could be produced and placed under a single name, yet could never be filled. This is exactly what the title of the exhibition is pointing to. These countless existences and meanings are presented to the viewer and the reader in a plural milieu.


BECOMING ISTANBUL is a project of Garanti Gallery originally realized for the German Architecture Museum (DAM Frankfurt) and is curated by Pelin Dervis, Bülent Tanju and Ugur Tanyeli. The exhibition at DAZ is supported by the Alfred Herrhausen Society, the international Forum of Deutsche Bank.It takes place within the 20th anniversary of the city partnership Berlin-Istanbul and is under the patronage of the Mayor of Berlin and Senator for Urban Development, Ingeborg Junge-Reyer.

More Information about
Deutsches Architekturmuseum
Alfred Herrhausen Society
Berlin-Istanbul 2009

WEBSITE: http://wwx.baunetz.de/sixcms_4/sixcms/detail.php?object_id=29&area_id=2816&id=1521463&template_id=10186

Urban Age Award Istanbul - Please contact me if you have any project information-

I have been currently on the distribution of Urban Age Award announcement for Istanbul. If you know any projects, or aware of any works ongoing please contact with me. We are about to name all our jury members very soon!

Son zamanlarda Urban Age Odulunun duyurulmasi icin calisiyorum kesintisiz. Eger konuyla ilgili bir proje biliyorsaniz veya yapilan calismalardan haberiniz var ise lutfen benimle iletisime gecin. Cok yakinda tum juri uyelerimizi de duyacaksiniz!