A|Z ITU JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE

Shaping spaces for mobility and experience

2024-11-28T22:37:33+03:00

Co-design studio with different design environments: Analogue design, designing within the design and parametric design

2024-01-30T21:41:01+03:00

This paper explores a graduate course offered by the Architectural Design Computing program at Istanbul Technical University, which is structured as a collaborative studio experience aimed at immersing students in diverse design environments. Going beyond conventional approaches, the course provides students with hands-on experiences across three distinct design settings: utilizing analogue tools, navigating a 3D virtual world, and engaging with computational tools for parametric modeling. This article presents an ethnographic assessment of this co-design studio, detailing its course structure, highlighting innovative pedagogical approaches, and showcasing the outcomes of the collaborative design endeavors. What distinguishes this exploration is its multifaceted examination, shedding light on the intricacies of collaborative design practices across varied contexts. The paper introduces a rigorous ethnographic evaluation to assess the affordances of each design environment, offering a novel perspective to scholarly discourse. The unique focus on students’ perceptions of collaborative design within these settings adds significant value, providing insights into the constraints and opportunities inherent in collaborative conceptual design processes. By undertaking this study, the research not only addresses ongoing concerns post-COVID pandemic but also establishes itself as a distinctive and valuable contribution to advancing the understanding of collaborative learning within architectural education.

The impact of public infrastructure on neighborhood livability

2024-01-30T21:31:47+03:00

Urban areas face obstacles hindering services and sustainable development, reducing neighbourhood contentment, and resulting in a lack of dynamism and efficiency. This paper discusses the potential impact of “neighbourhood quality design in terms of public infrastructure provision” on residents’ satisfaction and neighbourhood liveability in Cyberjaya, the smart city of Malaysia. This study aims to investigate the relationship between neighbourhood livability, public infrastructure provision, and residents’ satisfaction. Data was collected through a public survey and reviewing government reports, and the latest blueprint (Sustainable Smart City Action Plan) of Cyberjaya. The findings shed light on the importance of quality neighbourhood characteristics and its public infrastructure availability in enhancing liveability and resident satisfaction with the neighbourhood as their living area. The findings suggest that despite the availability of basic amenities, residents may experience lower levels of satisfaction and emotional response due to a lack of variations in social infrastructure that foster a sense of community and liveability.

Exploring case-based platforms: AI-powered meta-analysis of participatory design and planning practices

2024-05-07T11:21:03+03:00

Case-based platforms, such as Participedia, PartScout, Co-Cities, and LATINNO, are increasingly recognized as inclusive, cumulative, and informative tools for designing collaborative and participatory actions. These platforms are equipped with social technologies, crowdsourcing applications, and human-computer interactions, which facilitate the dissemination, analysis, and exchange of participatory design and planning (PD&P) experiences that address chronic public problems related to shared interests and values. However, exploring the ever-increasing, interdisciplinary, and extensive scope of PD&P cases to gain insights is challenging for researchers and practitioners, thereby making it essential to develop effective strategies. Despite participatory practices being inherently collective, there is little discussion of how to leverage collective intelligence (CI) into participatory research. We claim, accordingly, that the systematic use of CI will enrich our understanding of the diverse realm of PD&P. We have approached case-based platforms through the lens of CI, as an umbrella term bridging various concepts encompassing cooperative, bottom-up, citizen-led, collaborative, and grassroots actions. This study aims to conduct a meta-analysis to reveal cross-case patterns, specifically probing contextual, methodological, and actor-related dimensions, within a dataset comprising 2,439 cases. The research design is grounded in the case survey method, further enhanced by integrating AI-based clustering, mapping, and semantic analysis. The findings point to the promising performance of the proposed method in revealing diversified and highly interconnected PD&P patterns. Despite its limitations, this preliminary study provides valuable insights through the CI genome, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of PD&P landscapes and stimulating new research questions.

Exploring the spatial manifestations of migration movements: A case of Syrian migrants in Istanbul

2024-03-23T21:59:36+03:00

Focusing on the spatial experiences of migrants during their journey, this study examines the routes and encounters of skilled migrants moving from Syria to Turkey. It aims to understand evolving patterns in migrants’ overall life experiences, considering migration as both being in a place and establishing translocal connections. In this context, a survey was conducted on reasons for migration, routes, settlement preferences, adaptation challenges, and future plans of migrants, involving 60 Syrian migrants living in Istanbul. The data were subjected to the Chi-square significance test using the SPSS 28 program. The findings of the study emphasize the significant role of historical, cultural, geographical, and technological factors in influencing migrants’ migration decisions. Migrants face both challenges and opportunities in their living environments while various factors, including the desire to remain in Turkey, property ownership, past migration experiences, and socio-political dynamics, significantly impact their decisions to migrate. Moreover, past movements play a crucial role in shaping migrants’ future mobility choices, shaping their experiences throughout the migration journey while considering translocal connections. Therefore, the study emphasizes that the emergence of the idea of migration and all spatial and experiential encounters in reaching the destination create a migration career. These findings highlight the dynamic nature of international migration and underscore the complexities in the relationship between architecture and migration, suggesting avenues for further research to explore these complexities through qualitative methods and broader participant engagement.

Reading Sedad Hakkı Eldem in the context of the skein metaphor: An alternative analysis

2024-05-21T08:34:10+03:00

Sedad Hakkı Eldem’s architectural contributions encompass a diverse array of built and unbuilt projects, discourses, texts, and particularly a multitude of sketches from his youth. This breadth makes it challenging to encapsulate Eldem’s architecture in a single characterization. Previous attempts in Eldem literature to define his work through selected buildings, thoughts, or texts offer a convenient shortcut but risk overlooking its full continuity. Upon closer examination of Eldem’s oeuvre, spanning from his childhood to the final years of his life, a discernible continuity emerges within this diversity. It also becomes evident that the foundations of Eldem’s architectural genre were laid in his formative years. This paper aims to offer an alternative interpretation of Eldem’s architecture by unveiling this underlying continuity and foundational elements. Instead of focusing on specific buildings selected subjectively, as is the case in existing readings on Eldem, this paper seeks to evaluate Eldem’s architectural ethos within a broader framework. Drawing inspiration from Carlo Emilio Gadda’s metaphorical notion of a “skein”, the study perceives Eldem’s architecture as intricately woven. The paper employs Italo Calvino’s insights on this metaphor to explore Eldem’s childhood and youth, which served as a nexus of intercultural influences between Europe and Istanbul. It claims that this period was pivotal in shaping the skein of his architectural vision. By exploring the interplay between the experiences and productions of Eldem’s “formative years” and those of his professional life, this paper asserts that his legacy can be traced through the diverse tapestry of his work.

From the traditional Ottoman house to the apartment building in the Kasbah of Algiers

2023-12-25T08:12:20+03:00

During the French occupation, the historic urban fabric of Algiers, the Kasbah, went through many interventions, fragmentations and destruction. A field study conducted within the boundary of the historic core shows the existence of dwellings built or modified during the colonial period. The PPSMVSS study named these dwellings “traditional houses”, “remodelled traditional houses”, or “colonial houses built over Ottoman remains”, but no information is given about the remodelling work or the type of the Ottoman remains. This article traces the evolution of the housing typology in the Kasbah from the traditional Ottoman family house to the apartment building. The aim is to identify the evolution, adaptation and transformation process of traditional housing typologies. A sample of 180 houses located in the historic core was selected. This study investigates, identifies and compares the different housing typologies. It reviews and compares the housing morphological characteristics of both the Ottoman and the colonial periods. The results confirm the existence of two types of colonial houses with different spatial organizations and different construction techniques, materials and ornamentation. The first type, the rental shared house, reproduces the Ottoman housing typology and marks the first stage in the transformation of the traditional family house. The second type, the apartment building, preserves an organization around a central space, but it introduces many changes within the characteristics of the “traditional house”. It appears from this study, that the interaction between the two cultures has generated an indigenous form, a hybrid architecture, mixing traditional Ottoman architecture and colonial architecture.

Piranesi’s challenge: Rethinking the origins of European architecture

2024-06-28T10:43:11+03:00

Italian architect, archaeologist, and scholar Giovanni Battista Piranesi was a prolific Enlightenment figure who produced an elaborate series of drawings and etchings to support his following argument on the origins of European architecture: Roman architecture derived not from the Greek but from the Etruscan, which, according to him, derived from Egypt. Based on his meticulous archaeological examinations in excavations, he developed a history of architecture that was not based on the East West division and the separation of the continents. However, Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s approach rooting the origin of Roman architecture in the Greek came to dominate the standard history of architecture, and Piranesi was misinterpreted both in his day and posthumously. The posthumous codification of architectural history excluded Piranesi from the standardized progress of architectural history in the West and resulted in his identification by idiosyncrasy. Therefore, this work is an attempt to restore his argument to architectural history.

Unconditional authorization: Insights from the 2018 Development Amnesty in Türkiye

2024-03-12T13:51:47+03:00

Unauthorized housing is a phenomenon exceeding the limits of income, location, and specific groups of households with varying motivations, from the housing needs of households to personal advantages such as extra income and housing wealth. Türkiye is among the countries experiencing enormous levels of unauthorized housing activities and authorization attempts. As recently observed, a development amnesty to manage these units via an uncontrolled, self-declared, and paid authorization process has received more than 10 million applications. However, the location and extent of these applications have yet to be declared, though they matter in both urban planning and housing markets. This study delves into the possible locations of unauthorized housing in Türkiye concerning main land-use cover characteristics. For this purpose, this study fields a question to reveal the driving factors of unauthorized housing and the spatial reflections of the relationships between land use and changes in them. In this study, more than 700 thousand phone calls to the support center of the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change have been utilized during the years selected, and data concerning land-use cover in Türkiye were examined at the district level. Geographically weighted regression and multiscale geographically weighted regression models were applied to investigate the spatial heterogeneity of the (change in) land-use cover on unauthorization. The results reveal that some types of land-use cover are significant and showed variegated trends. Moreover, the accumulation of unauthorized housing has been revealed in some metropolitan cities, including earthquake-prone areas and natural protection zones.

Empire builders: Tracing the urban footprints of Seljuk women from Khorasan to Anatolia

2024-03-24T09:36:17+03:00

In 1050 CE, the Seljuk dynasty entered Greater Khorasan and established a vast empire in Iran. Gradually, they also conquered some regions of Iraq and Anatolia. This dynasty was of Turkish origin, and they were sunni Muslims. The main objective of the current study is to discuss and explain the role of women under the Seljuk Empire in all three Seljuk regions: Iranian Seljuks (Seljuks of Greater Khorasan and Kerman), the Seljuks of Iraq and the Levant, and the Seljuks of Anatolia, in the development of urban settlements through identifying their civil construction activities. Moreover, the specifications of the buildings founded by court women and the reasons behind their construction are explored. Using a descriptive-analytical approach and relying on historical documents, the current study tries to present historical facts by collecting information, evaluating and validating this information, and combining documented foundations and analyzing them to obtain defensible results concerning the objective of the study. Historical sources show that in all three geographical regions, women were the founders of many buildings, and had an impact on the community in terms of both architectural value and their sheer number. In addition, the majority of buildings constructed by women were built for public benefit. The activities for public benefit in the Anatolia region have more diverse applications. The main applications were schools and aqueducts in Iran, schools in Iraq and the Levant, and caravanserai and khanqahs in Anatolia.

Textual representation of space: Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels

2024-06-03T06:58:19+03:00

The definitation and representation of space is always debated in architectural epistemology. Drawing and drawing-based interfaces are considered the primary tool for representing space in today’s architecture. The fact that the space has subjective characteristics belonging to the world of perception calls into question the adequacy of the means of representation. This article discusses how space is represented as a text in Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels with the belief that textual representation is a possibility for making sense of space. The methodology of the study is based on the grounded theory approach. Considering the textual volume of Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels, the subject to be analyzed was limited and focused on spatial descriptions in order to create the opportunity for an in-depth discussion. As a result of the data obtained, the textual representation of space was discussed with quotations from Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels by revealing the themes and relationships between concepts. Four themes regarding the textual representation of space in Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels become evident: the experience of space, the depiction of space, the representation of space through human beings and the imagination of space. The spatial information conveyed in Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels is an extremely valuable representational interface that defines the architectural and socio-cultural texture of the 17th century Ottoman Empire and reveals the relationship between people and space of the period.

Gamification in planning education: Impacts on academic achievement

2024-03-25T16:20:49+03:00

When examining gamification in urban planning education within the existing literature, it becomes evident that numerous studies have been conducted on applied/studio courses. However, there is a notable gap in the literature regarding theoretical courses. The objective of this study is to assess the influence of Game-based Student Response Systems (GSRS) on the academic performance of urban planning students in a theoretical course titled "Introduction to Urban and Regional Planning & Ethics.". Throughout the semester, students participated in four quizzes on the online platform Quizizz and also completed a survey. The study assessed the effect of GSRS on academic success through a correlation analysis of participation rates in quizzes and final exam grades. The findings indicated no significant impact on academic achievement. However, based on the survey responses, students exhibited a positive attitude towards GSRS.

A latitudinal evaluation between the learning styles and modes of the students in interior architecture education and the YKS score types

2024-06-21T13:51:39+03:00

The objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between the Higher Education Examination Score Types and Kolb Learning Styles of undergraduate students enrolled in the “Interior Architecture” and “Interior Architecture and Environmental Design” programmes, which accept students with diverse score types. In this context, a hypothesis was formed based on the difference between the score types and learning styles of students admitted to the Department of Interior Architecture with a numerical score type and students admitted to the Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design with an equal weight score type. A comparative relational survey model was selected to test the hypothesis. The study population consisted of foundation universities in Istanbul. In the 2021-2022 academic year, there were students enrolled in undergraduate programmes in interior architecture (and environmental design) at 34 foundation universities in Istanbul. The sample comprises 166 undergraduate students enrolled at Maltepe University’s Department of Interior Architecture and Istanbul Gedik University’s Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design. In the context of quantitative research, the convenience sampling method, one of the random sampling types, was employed to collect data. The Kolb Learning Style Inventory was employed to ascertain the learning styles of the students. The findings of this study indicate that there is no significant difference between the learning styles of students at Maltepe University and Istanbul Gedik University, thereby supporting the research hypothesis.