By Zeynep Gulsen, Eser Yagci, Meram Irina Pienaru

Two architects, one from Turkey and one from Romania with a landscape architect from Turkey came together to point out their view on the Galata‐Şişhane area. It is a beginning of a brainstorming yet to continue and to be realized in the long‐run process, hopefully !

We mashed up our thoughts, critics, expressions, words between us and Galata‐Şişhane actors by experiencing around the area through collecting stories. What is not changing in the area that it is changing constantly! Istanbul is a city that forms on layers where we can witness this layering transformation physically and mentally. Through the idea of overlapping layers and stories, we came out with 3 different phases in our experimental project. Our aim was to create actions and collect reactions by narrating Istanbul.

GOOGLE MAPS
View

urban myths team in a larger map

In the workshop, the main process was to experience through the eyes of the users. They had many things to share with us. Different identities and stories, various characteristics… There is an existing collective memory in the area that is open to change everyday life.

Stories of places which are indicating the faces of the neighborhood even sometimes revealing the unknown had caught our eyes. We traced routes, marked secrets, asked questions, listened inhabitants, experienced what they know about their neighborhood, collected memories and tried to tag them in virtual reality of the area by googling maps. In the links above, you can see photos through our routes and participate your own by adding your reality of collecting data from Galata-Şişhane. It can be an unconventional media to be shared within interactive users.

OVERLAPPING MAPS

In relation to googling maps, we asked to ourselves what if we make people draw their own maps. The main purpose is to follow the change of the area through the inhabitants’ and users’ eyes. The outcomes of this method can be either making them notice and become aware of how their neighborhoods are transforming or showing the 3rd eyes, to us, how this change is occurring through the time. Handing out existing maps to the users can be one method by letting them marking and highlighting their local behaviours in the urban space, and the other one can be, maybe through participatory workshops, letting them draw their individual maps. If this proposal can be applied within the transformation process, it can create a collective memory to be overlapped throughout the years of change.

STICKING MYTHS

Experimenting how we can provoke subconsciousness through urban myths.

People tell stories!

The first two phases were about tracing and producing existing info to trigger awareness and participation. Now, faking stories which is one of the greatest tool of big brothers is the provocation of subconsciousness.

MYTHS AND THEIR IMPACT ON REALITY !

Quality of decisions / Degradation of facts / Reconstruc9on of history of Istanbul The myths reproduced by official mechanisms for justification of imposed rehabilitation projects…

The current approaches in the projects on individual or collective uses of urbanspaces reconstruct the culture as well as the built environment through identity
politics considering the short term needs of the elites. Yet, Istanbul and its inhabitants change rapidly, the sovereignty of the fashion fact and identity politics penetrate into these approaches. The urban myths on the neighborhoods adressed as the most corrupted areas are not brought only by the media. Also the official mechanisms, designers, academics, companies, rich people take place in the degradation of the facts and its impact on urban decisions.

In 2005, The Council of Ministers of Turkey approved a law no. 5366 whereby the norms of conservation of historical properties have been redefined. Subsequently, the authorities declared 5 neighborhoods in Istanbul to be rehabilitated without collecting public opinions, and these areas have represent the spirit of Istanbul with their cultural diversities for ages. The projects collected many reactions by the inhabitants of these neighborhoods and NGOs considering the unfair facts behind the implementations of urban transformation processes. Some of them seek to claim their rights on the Court of EU. By contrast the municipalities still speaking highly about their success stories about the projects. The urban myths are still in charge! Then, the ironic uses of myths would be essential to set off the public reactions against decisions and restricted accessibilities by design.

Since myths touch off the normalization of the abnormal as well as the abnormalization of the normal, sticking them on the urban surfaces and collecting reactions through mouths and web 2.0 can become a contemporary urban tool to integrate users in the process in order to create user generated cities.

First starting with experimenting on urban surfaces mainly pointing out the crucial realities of the area by faking them, than continuing the process with blogging and creating an interactive platform of urban myths as an ironic urban intervention.

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Yehuda Safran studied at Saint Martin’s School of Art, the Royal College of Art and University College, London. He taught at the Architectural Association, Goldsmith’s College, Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London; as well as fine art and theory at the Janvan Eyck Academy, Maastricht, Holland. He has published essays on many aspects of the theory and practice of art, architecture and film – in Domus, Sight and Sound, Lotus, a+u, AA File, Springer etc. His book on Mies van der Rohe was published last year by Blau in Lisbon and Gustavo Gilli in Barcelona. He curated, inter alia, the British Arts Council touring exhibition ‘The Architecture of Adolf Loos’ and the ‘Fredrick Kiesler’ show at the Architecture Association. He was a trustee of the 9H Gallery and a founding  member of the Architecture Foundation in London and was a member of the College International de Philosophie, Paris. Currently he lives and works in Paris and teaches architecture and theory at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he directs the AARieL, Art & Architecture Research Lab. He is also visting Professor in Mendrisio Academy of architecture in Switzerland and at the Nanjing Institute of Architecture in China.

Aslı Kıyak İngin graduated from Mimar Sinan University as an architect. She has post graduated from Istanbul Technical University “Developing a method for the analysis of formal and spatial structure of traditional cities: The Example of Ayvalık” and She has graduated Design Culture and Management Certificated Program in Istanbul Bilgi University. She works as a designer and design manager at The Celik Dizayn Lighting Company in Istanbul. She was vise president of Istanbul branch of Industrial Designers Society of Turkey. She is currently the head of Human Settlements Association. She is involved several projects in different fields in city, architecture, design, art and production.“Made in Şişhane” is one of her projects about Galata-Şişhane main and oldest lighting district of Istanbul, and an alternative approach for city transformation which is used district’s potential like dynamic network, design, creativity and small scale manufacturing. She has been working for an old Romany District named Sulukule in The Historical Peninsula for the last 4 years. She organized with a group of people 40 Days and 40 Nights Sulukule Events and established Sulukule Platform to protect the district and local people from the demolishes and removing the people and show the sustainable and participatory models for the neighborhood development.

Geeta Mehta is an Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Columbia University in New York, and a co-founder of URBZ.  Geeta received her Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo, M.S. in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University, and B. Arch from the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi. She has taught and practiced urban design in USA, Japan, India and Vietnam. Geeta is the co-author of several books including Japan Style, Japan House, Japan Living, Japan Gardens, and New Japan Architecture. Her upcoming books include “City Connect: Regeneration, Equity and Sustainability in the 21^st Century”.

Ozlem Berber was born in Eskişehir, Turkey, 1975. She completed her B.Arch. in D.E.U., School of Architecture, Turkey, 1998 and MSci.Arch. in I.T.U., School of Architecture, Turkey, 2000 with her thesis of “An Investigation on Architectural Knowledge”. She has participated in various national and international projects like “Rotterdam Architecture Biennial” in 2005, “Istanbul City Ateliers” in 2005, “Archiprix International Exhibition & Workshop” in 2003, “Istanbul City Ateliers” in 2002, “Turkish Architecture Student’s Meeting, TMÖB” between 1995-2002; as organizer, tutor and/or participant. She has awards from architecture project competitions; applied graphic designs and publishing works as editor and/or writer. For now she is working as a research assistant and continues her Phd. in I.T.U. School of Architecture.

Didem Danis has been teaching sociology at Galatasaray University since 2005. She received her Ph. D.  degree at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, in November 2008, with a thesis about the social networks of Iraqi transit migrants in Istanbul. Danis’ two main research areas are international relations and urban fragmentation, and she had published several articles on both topics.

Rahul Srivastava has studied Anthropology in Mumbai, Delhi and Cambridge (UK). He taught at Wilson College, Mumbai, worked as the first Director of PUKAR, Mumbai and subsequently was invited to be a research fellow at Nara University, Japan and New School University, New York. He writes fiction and commentaries on urban issues and new knowledge practices via airoots.org, organizes knowledge initiatives on urbanism around the world and is a founding partner of URBZ and Urbanology. He lives in Goa and Mumbai.

Ayca Ince She studied urban and regional planning at Mimar Sinan University, received her MSc (“the role of the cultural intermediaries in the Turkish Music Industry”) from “Cities, Space and Society Programme” in London School of Economics and Political Sciences (2001), and her MA (“spatial change in Istanbul with the support of the cultural Industry”) from Sociology Department in Mimar Sinan University (2003). She worked for 4 years as a research assistant in Management of Performing Arts Department in Istanbul Bilgi University. She became a member of Cultural Policy Initiative in 2005 and coordinated a project called “Promoting research and accumulation on cultural policy in Turkey” between 2006-2007.This project resulted with an introductory book on Turkish Cultural Policy that she was the co-editor of. Now she works as the project coordinator of “The Invisible Cities’: Building Capacities for Local Cultural (Policy) Transformation in Turkey” at Istanbul Bilgi University and teaches “Audience Development” and “Arts, Culture and Community” courses at Cultural Management Programme of the same university. Ayca Ince is currently a PhD Candidate in Sociology at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.

Matias Echanove studied economics & government at the London School of Economics, urban planning at Columbia University in New York and urban information systems at the University of Tokyo. He has researched urban culture, participatory planning and information technology in New York, Tokyo and Mumbai, and has organized workshops, studios, seminars and conferences in various cities. He’s a contributor to airoots.org and a founding partner of URBZ and Urbanology

Dr. Evren Uzer is an urban planner & designer based in Istanbul, Turkey and Gothenburg, Sweden; working on disaster risk mitigation, participatory housing and interventions in the public space. She is working at ITU Housing Research and Education Center at Faculty of Architecture in Istanbul. She holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from ITU. She, together with designer Otto von Busch, works on artistic research projects under the name “roomservices”. She is also co-founder and member of Istanbul-based public space interventions group, “imkanmekan”.

Ebru Erdonmez Born in Uşak (Turkey) in 1974, she studied Architecture at the University of Yildiz, and started her academic career as a research assistant at the same university. She finished her Master Thesis at Istanbul Technical University of Istanbul, with the topic “Transparency in Architecture”. She finished her doctoral thesis at Yıldız Technical University with “The Role of Open Public Spaces on Being Society”. She is working as Asst. Prof. Dr. since 2006 at Yildiz Technical University.
She worked as Guest Professor  at Siegen University, Germany in 2006-2007 Erdonmez has won prizes in a number of international and national architectural competition. (UIA- Unicef International Design Competition etc.) She has been organizing a number of international and national student workshops and scientific meetings .Some of her articles published in books are; Erdönmez E., Ökem S.,”Public Transformation Of The Bosphorus Facts and Opportunities”, Public Istanbul Spaces and Spheres of the Urban, (Ed. Eckardt, F., Wildner, K.), S: 187-205, Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2008, ISBN: 978-3-89942-865-0, “Pseudo Utopias”, Le Cahiers de La MSHE Ledoux Autour de Ledoux: Architecture, Ville et Utopie, s: 345-360, Presses Universitaires de France- Comte ,ISBN: 978-2-84867-234-2-EAN, ISSN: 19560222, 2008, Erdönmez, E., Ökem S., “Affects Of Open Public Spaces On Socıety” Erdönmez E., Akı A., Megaron, Architectural Journal of Yıldız Technical University, Year:1, Issue:1, 2005. Her topics are  “Architectural Design”, “Urban Design” and “Environmental Design”.

Tara Kuruvilla is a currently a Junior at New York University, majoring in Art History.  She is happiest on museum and gallery crawls in different cities of the world and firmly believes art can make the world a better place. Her interest in Urban Planning and Arts Activism have led her to an internship at URBZ, where she is organizing the Istanbul Mashup 2010.

Ruya Ipek Saner is a Turkish-American student in the Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design program at Columbia University GSAPP.  She graduated with a B.Arch from Rice University in 2008. Aiding in coordination and translation, Ruya Saner will also participate in the presentation of the workshop output at Columbia University.

Büşra Bağcı was born in Denizli, Turkey, where she attended Türk Eğitim Vakfı Anatolian High School. She is now continuing her education at the Izmir Institute of Technology, Faculty of Architecture.

Erdal Kondakcı 28.02.1989′da Bulgaristan’ ın Kırcaali kentinde doğdu.1990 yılından bu yana İstanbul,Küçükçekmece’de oturuyor. Pertevniyal Lisesi’nden mezun. İzmir Yüksek Teknoloji Enstitüsü, Mimarlık bölümünde bu dönem 1.sınıfı tamamladı.

Eser Yagci is an architect She is currently supervising the “Urban Dreams V/Kent Dusleri V” Workshop, Karakoy Group, and seeks to develop her Phd Dissertation on “Expressive Dynamics of Place: Architecture and Anarchism.”

Ola Nielsen is a landscape artist who has worked in Denmark and Sweden, who most recently got involved in a one year studio focusing on Pune, India. His interest lies in a cities potential, and he is keen to contribute his expertise as a landscapist to the workshop in reimagining Sishane-Galata.

Alp Ruben is a graduate of Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi, based in Istanbul, Turkey. He is currently completing his studies at Viyana Teknik Üniversitesi

Tolgay Keskin was born in Antalya, and is now living in Istanbul. He feels that his perspective as a latecomer to the city will offer contribute a fresh new outlook to the Istanbul Mashup. His talent lies in the artful capturing and presentation of life, and he hopes to develop this skill via the workshop.

Eléonore Boissinot has been studying history and geography in France and India, and done fieldworks on the informal housing in Amman and Bombay. She is interested in mixing various disciplines, meeting inspiring people from all kind of backgrounds, and exploring urban spaces with photography and video, especially through documentary filmmaking.

Jeanne Fouchet was born in Paris, where she is currently completing her Bachelor’s degree in Plastic Art in Paris 8 Saint Denis University. She enjoys working with photography, drawing, painting, and is especially fond of “mashing up” several mediums and disciplines in her productions.

Işıl Karataş Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Endüstri Ürünleri Tasarımı 2008 mezunu. Şu anda Kadir Has Üniversitesi’nde yüksek lisans yapmakta, aynı zamanda yüksek lisans asistanı olarak çalışmakta.

Meram Irina Pienaru is a recent graduate in Architecture at University of Architecture and Urbanism of Bucharest. She has lived in Italy for a year, and participated in workshops in Spain, Italy and Germany, in addition to a training program in Minsk. Istanbul holds great interest for Meram as it was the first city she ever visited abroad, and she looks forward to returning for the URBZ Mashup workshop.

Vildan Öztürk is a graduate in Graphic Design from the Marmara University Faculty of Fine Arts, following which she worked as a graphic designer and art director at advertising agencies for 4 years. She is currently doing her masters degree in design at Kadir Has University, where she is a teaching assistant.

Zeynep Gülşen is a landscape architecture gradute working as the asistant event manager in Yapi-Endustri Merkezi [The Building Information Center] where she inputs her educational background and  personal skills to design and manage architecture/design/building/urban oriented events. She has completed her BLarch in Istanbul Technical University with the graduation project called as ‘Yedikule  Gazhouse Area-Urban Open Space Design’ proposing “Sinaai Yedikule” that aimed to create an interactive urban laboratory by giving back the area’s role of once the energy spreader, urban catalyst.  Than she has involved in Istanbul Bilgi University’s Design Culture and Management one-year certificate program. Following that year she went to Domus Academy, Rome, to continue her master degree  in Cultural Experience Design and Management where she completed the program with a conceptual project under the topic of “Urban Space as Medium for Sustainable Communication”. During her studies which took place in Turkey, U.S.A and Italy she had participated to many meetings and workshops while worked in different fields of design from an architectural office to a non-profit organizational film festival, from a communication agency to a culture&art foundation and an architectural publication. Having a passion to music and cinema, she is interested in pretty much everything that creates a participatory cultural dialogue within interdisciplinary design approach in the urban life and believes that this mash-up experience is going to create a strong collaborative production and awareness for the city.

URBZ continues its experimentation with local knowledge production, collective creativity, individual expression and radical pedagogy in Istanbul with the Mashup Workshop, which will bring together local residents, travellers, thinkers, creators, doers and other enthusiasts in the neighbourhood of Sishane-Galata.

Just as many other parts of Istanbul, Sishane-Galata needs to redefine itself in a context that keeps on expanding. Well known for its bazaar-like atmosphere and tight social networks, Sishane-Galata is a not-so-global neighbourhood in a city that seems to constantly grow and stretch itself. Just as Istanbul is being celebrated as a global city at the centre of a vast sphere of economic and cultural influence, the same global, regional and metropolitan powers are forcing so many localities to redefine their functions and identities.

Fortunately, not all forces brought about by globalization are synonymous with cultural and economic homogenization. Sometimes the flows can be reversed and villages, small streets and local communities can send a feedback to the world. Like the bright light of a shining star, such feedback signals a singular existence, one among millions. Millions of neighbourhoods affirming themselves in the world, and all of them in their own way, providing a sense of their trajectories, which can serve as an inspiration to others.

The Mashup Workshop will serve as an eccentric instrument pitching and magnifying the voices of Sishane-Galata and bringing them to the world –or at least to the World-Wide Web. Rather than pledging to accurately reproduce local beats, workshop participants will mix them, mash them and tune them up to their own realities. The workshop aims at establishing a connection with the neighbourhood and its residents in the form of a creative dialog. In the process, local skills and knowledge will be used and investigated, along with those of participants from other parts of the world.

The workshop’s output will be a multimedia portrait of the neighbourhood and its broader context, using all forms of expression available, including video, photo, sound, design, drawing, fiction, performance, and painting. The material produced will be published on urbz.net and madeinsishane.com. The workshop will raise awareness locally and globally, promote the neighbourhood and its residents, assist them in their advocacy, and hopefully influence planning and policy-making.

Stay tuned! for more updates urbz.net/istanbul

The workshop started at the JJ College of Architecture and by the end of a long day the groups coalesced into the following themes:

(Note: The titles are tentative and may change from day to day till the final Mashup emerges on November 1, 2009 at 6:00p.m. at the Girgaum Catholic Club, Khotachiwadi.)

1. Toy Bazaar

Toys in exchange of memories in the old bazaar style

Himanshu S, Monica Nanjunga,  Guru S., Varsha Deshikar

2. Carousel – words from worlds

Kaiwan Mehta, Oskar Edstorm, Beata Hemer, Suleiman Merchant , Girish Menon

3. Chaotic Patterns

Cecil Pinto, Edson Dias

4.  Null Bazaar – Trust Buildings. Everyday life of Null Bazaar through trust buildings.

Ranjit Kandangaonkar,  Amit  Rai, Ekta,

5. Path Finder – Mapping of abdul reheman street with signs and symbols.

6. From dawn to dust – A/V of the way of life of A.R Street.

7. No. 1 – Urination – Sanitation.

Kunal Ghevaria, Rajitha Vripparthi, Cheshta Papneja, Renny Verghese, Shruti Gaokar, Sanobar Girap, Mustansir Dalvi.

8. Under the flyover – Making public space under the street.

Ankit Savla, Stephanie Carlisle, Sourav Biswas, Himanshu & Monica, Guru, Varsha.

9. The Palm Project: Telling the story of places through the stories of people.

Pratishta Durga , Niral Parekh and Tarun Durga

10. Bazaarchitecture

Chor Bazaar

Geeta Mehta, Ally Reeves, Dipti Higorani, Asmita Bandekar, Yoji Toriumi

Crawford Market

Geeta Mehta, Harshvardhan Jakkar, Apporva Jalindre, Neva Pedczzini, Vyasdev Yenglchom, Mayuri Straub, Juiichi Iida

11. Khotachiwadi Wall Project – Painting the Neighbourhood

James Ferreira, Isa, Himanshu S and others

Bijal Vachharajani writes about the URBZ MASHUP Mumbai in this week’s edition of Time Out Mumbai

Politicians and the media have been debating the plan to build a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji off Marine Drive. The municipality has been busy considering proposals for towering hotels across the city. Matias Echanove, Rahul Srivastava and Geeta Mehta, on the other hand, have a different vision for Mumbai. They believe that the city should develop more organically, as a user-generated city. “When you are developing an urban design, you should incorporate systems that allow people to intervene in the planning,” said Echanove , who has started the research outfit urbanology.com with Srivastava. “Residents are the city experts. They are the ones who have the most pertinent and accurate data about their city.”

This fortnight, Echanove, Srivastava and Mehta, who is an associate professor of architecture and urban studies at Temple University, Japan, are organising a workshop that will help city residents put some of their visions down on paper. Urbz Mashup will give artists, designers, architects, activists, writers, photographers and just about anyone interested in cities and urban planning the opportunity to present their ideas about Mumbai in any form they want – music, videos, photo-collages, even short stories. “They can speculate about the future architecture, create a dream scenario or a nightmarish one,” said Echanove. “It could be a vision inspired by any place – a neighbourhood, another city or country.” The work will be exhibited online on the Urbz website, while selected plans will be displayed at an exhibition at the Sir JJ School of Art.

Over four days, the group will cover some of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods, including Crawford Market, Bhuleshwar and Chor Bazaar, documenting their history, archiving the changes taking place and using their imagination and skills to re-interpret the area. “The workshop is an opportunity for urban practitioners to collectively explore localities, streets and neighbourhood,” said Srivastava. “They can bring in their own experiences to produce new ways of looking at, visualising and imagining the city.”

The Mashup idea emerged from the Urban Typhoon workshop that had been organised in Dharavi in 2008. “We felt this time we should focus on the creative element of urban practice,” said Srivastava. “Development laws are going to change the landscape of Mumbai. So we thought we’d have a small exercise that will find new ways of looking at a street.” He explained that the Mashup aims to transform the city in a creative manner “that does not destroy the spirit of the neighbourhood, its residents, their thoughts and feelings” .

Echanove added that the workshop would also concentrate on specific pockets such as the nineteenth-century Khotachiwadi village in Girgaum. “This historic site is threatened by real estate developers,” said Echanove. “There’s a lot of pressure to sell and once these bungalows are sold, they will be destroyed. However, we can use design strategies to preserve the neighbourhood.” He cites fashion designer James Ferreira’s house in Khotachiwadi as an example. Ferreira has restored his family home in a way that the ground floor functions as a living space and the first floor as an office. Another bungalow has rented out the ground floor to a gym. “It’s almost like a village economy operating in an urban space,” Echanove said. “This way, at least the income generated goes towards conserving the locality. At the Mashup we will work with the residents and try to find similar solutions.”