architecture * metu | ankara
Editorial by neris parlak - guest editor
Hello world. Post’ure is here again with its second issue to raise some questions and discussions on city and chaos. The city we live in is, in some ways, problematic and sometimes is little hard on us. When we leave the protective cocoon of the campus, a number of problems immediately surround us: difficulty to get around the city without privatelyowned vehicle, pedestrians stacked between the heavy traffic and the jungle of buildings, impossibility to catch scattered public events all over the city with loose connections, air and sound pollution transgressing our biological safety limits, so on and so forth. The term chaos, for some, is selected to describe the precarious, problematic character of the city. However, within all these mass and disorder, there is a path to lead us to the things that are extraordinary, unpredictable and unique, which controlled sterilization of an ordinary organization could not provide. Only chaos in the city can give birth to unprecedented, unpredictable existences. City with all its chaos accommodates the filthiest as well as the most stunning. In this issue, we invite you to a journey celebrating the chaos, itinerary of which is drawn by five friends with their gripping writings. In the first text, Tilbe poses the question of whether we really want to live in an ideal city even before examining the possibility of having an ideal city. In parallel line of thoughts, Zeynep invites us to focus on the subjects in the city: the individuals and their individualities. She draws our attention to the impossibility of establishing an order regulating diverse array of individualities. Adis, on the other hand, takes us to his hometown, Sarajevo, to trigger our thoughts on arrival, departure, sense of belonging and return. Hammod has completely another point of view, literally: the point of view of a cat! In this way, he forces us to question our deeply ingrained preconceptions on ourselves, others and the city affecting and affected by these two. Last but not least, Burcu accepts chaos as it is. She tries to materialize the concept so that we can touch it via her words. Apart from those, we want to remind you that the news bulletin that you hold is just some part of entries on our blog, where you can find many more texts and several entries on Post’ure events took place within the last month related to our topic. We believe that, in chaos of these texts, workshops, talks and all other events, you will find your very own stance. Enjoy!
Upcoming!
16.03.2015 Post’ure Launch: “City & Chaos” 19.03.2015 Post’ure RED: Erasmus Program 26.03.2015 Post’ure TALK 28.03.2015 Post’ure ATELIER 06.04.2015 Deadline for Submissions Issue_03: Fiction
City & Utopia: Ideal to Whom?
The Point of Returning
tilbe gündüz
adis kovačević
tilbe.gunduz@hotmail.com
adis1.168@gmail.com
The sarcasm level between our ideas about the cities that we inhabit, and the cities that we dream about living in is astonishingly high. This irony derives from the instinct of human beings to escape from the current chaotic lifestyle that they have, and rise up through the land of “sunshine and daisies”. All in all, would not it be amazing to live in an ideal city where all the utopias of mankind meet? Think about a city where there is no violence, less hours of working in a day, no poverty; briefly, any happy notion that one imagines as “perfect”. Would the world be a better place, then? No, absolutely not. For why, such a city would be a catastrophe, if we people are to live in it.
Ten years ago, I would not have expected the life I have pursued, nor the cities I was to call, if not homes, then places of residence. How many is one supposed to have? And according to what criteria? I have never wondered, partly because I would always, as I do know, regard family the true home, rather than I would a place; and partly because there have been just too many of them to be sure which one I originally come from. There is what one calls a ‘birthplace’, ‘hometown’, ‘place of residence’, but I believe to have discovered a ‘place of the heart’, around which feelings circle in dreams and in reality, drawing memories and inspiration; and drawing life.
Before explaining the bombshell that I just dropped, I would like to explain what “the city” associates in our mindset. City is an exhibition ground for the bigger, better, faster and stronger of anything, of which is directed by governments and starred by architects, urban designers and city planners. Cities are driven by economic, social and environmental forces, and the role that these stars play in it is [or supposed to be] humanitarian and caring, as well as even egoistic. The architect, for instance, designs lifestyles for many kinds of people and many kinds of purposes; yet, enjoys his product not only by the benefits that he brought to a particular community, but also by the bliss and pleasure of offering a masterpiece to public display. Similarly, the government and the private estate owners are at the center of this pleasure in a greedy, economic way. This satisfaction brings a competitive understanding to “design” concept in general. The stars want big, the directors want bigger, the directors want good, the stars want better; at some point in time, they started to become machines that answer to money, prestige and luxury. Environmental and social concerns are no longer the main constraint. That is what happens in most of the cities that fail to respond human needs.
Now, I do not assume Sarajevans would allow me to call myself a ‘Sarajlija’. I am sure they would not, that is. To be worthy of the distinction, I suppose you need to shout aloud the philosophy of life in a tram; you need, perhaps, to have at least ten pieces of ćevapi – the Bosnian version of kebab – at a time; and you need to have that superportion in Sarajevo’s most famous ćevapi house, regardless of how poorly prepared it may be. Ill-fitting in the imposed requirements of the society, I can at least console myself with having enjoyed in all things cultural. Now, in my absence, it bursts upon me heavily: the shining of Sacred Heart Cathedral’s vitrage at night; the afternoon sun reflected on the façade of the Holy Nativity Church when I would be just arriving in the downtown; and the serenity of the Emperor’s mosque, its interior lit by only two lanterns on the sides of the mihrab, and lulled by the sound of gurgling water from the garden fountain – all the scents of which I have not been able to experience in any place of the Orient.
Think of the chaos that dominates most of the cities. More and more traffic congestion each day, people that are always in a rush for getting somewhere in time, the economic and social dissimilarity between two neighborhoods, the cliff between architectural tissues of one region and another, less public open spaces, the nature that is being cut down in the name of “public welfare” when all it has done so far is introducing new complications… Is this the way to go, if you have chosen to live in a city? Or, would anyone want this breach of livability? Do not we all want to escape to suburbs, or at least to cities that have better life standards? Most of us do, but there is a concealed, horrifying truth that lies in our alterego: we actually enjoy this mess. How come we could ever enjoy this mess? The reason is that if every circumstance would be ideal for all of us, then we would be betraying our very human nature. That is why there can never be an ideal city, that is why there cannot be utopic cities. If there were, then machines would be living in them, not us. We are such creatures that are always in search for the best of everything. However, like it is the case in philosophy, we are never interested in finding the exact answers; the allure is to ask the most accurate questions. Our minds trick us to find the best and the most ideal, but every gold medalist eventually search for more achievements: there is no ending, and there is no universal “best”. Therefore, everyone deeply knows that we just like the dream of it, and the process to reach out to “the best” as well as we can. This idea is what drives us forward. As for cities, the ugly truth is extremely parallel to the mind behavior. Many ideal cities were offered by many architects and philosophers, and almost all of them serve greater goods than the egos of the ones in charge: more greenery, wider streets, less traffic congestion, priority of pedestrians, more open public spaces, hierarchical order of the buildings; even the interpretations on the daily life, such as improved human relations, less working hours a day, no violence, peace everywhere. What would happen if such cities were in fact the reality? The whole community would go suicidal, because there is neither any perfection in our world, nor can we handle it. Humans were designed to struggle, and meant to actually enjoy it masochistically. As a conclusion, nothing will change about the contemporary cities. For some, there are actual, generous governments, architects and city planners that play a part in transforming the cities into a humanitarian oasis; and for some, there are governments that turn the cities into their own, flamboyant pile of nothingness. Yet, in either case, the human will keep on dreaming, each different from another, the oceans and oceans of non-existing cities, without any knowledge of getting “sarcasmed” by his trouble-lover masochistic alter-ego.
It seems I have been left with only a rare chance, from time to time, to inhale that muchneeded spirit of fierce, yet relieving energy, possibly compacted by the centuries of stories and peoples, the ghosts of which the tiny streets are now incapable of disposing. A scar of or a monument to either beauty, passion or horror is to be seen in Sarajevo’s every corner, waiting to delight or upset, but never to leave one indifferent. It did leave me so upon my last strolling around the city, during which I paid a visit to an old synagogue. Seeing symbols of another cultural entity, a completely different one, in a city I thought I had become accustomed to, made me but live Sarajevo once more. An exiled community of Spanish Jews came to settle in the town more than four hundred years ago, a circumstance which I was now experiencing with full power, inasmuch as, looking through windows, I saw the buildings of Sarajevo’s other confessions, piercing the air with their towers near enough to the synagogue to attest to the city’s irresistible air of civilisational unity. Long has now passed the conscience of the city’s heart, inviting me and beating with its rusticated streets and the smell of coffee, the prospect of minarets and church towers compressed into a single horizon, the bell of street cars inscribing the arteries that let in and out the crowds of the inhabitants and travellers. The four years I spent living there, now inconceivably short in my memory, taught me sunsets and twilights, the lights of temples that announce a vibrant night and the notions of civilisation: for that very city, however the locals may be doing it a disservice with their sometimes uncourteous behaviour, has been embracing cultures and religions, as if a part of nature and worldly order, discriminant towards none and accepting of all. And it has, indeed, been accepting of me and become a foothold in the chaos of an uncertain life, a place to which I may never fully return, but come to again and again. That is, perhaps, what the words of Mehmed Selimović spoke of, which I shall conclude with: ‘And that is what it is all about: to return. From a point on earth to yearn, depart and arrive again.’
Feel the Life Enjoy the Chaos
You are a Cat in the City
Unsolvable Solution
zeynep elif yelken
hammad haroon
burcu tuncel
zeyelken@gmail.com
hammadharoon93@gmail.com
Once upon a time, there were essences, which enable life and know of the beings and ones’ circle. One day, they were placed in each and every being to provide them with life. However, the beings, which were placed essence inside couldn’t feel what the essences suggest about life. Through a hardcore try, they recognized this very essence. While the beings were struggling with them, the others appeared.
The whirring of the ceiling fan ceases, stirring you from your dreams. You open your eyes to angry exclamations, which you do not understand, but you can feel that they are related to the daily occurrences resulting from the death of all the electrical objects. And yet, these strange beings come back to life just as mysteriously as they disappear. You spot your human, despairingly wringing its hands over a black rectangle, on which it had been hunched over for the past four hours. Where there were images of buildings and bridges, there is now only blackness, and perhaps that is why the human is panicking. It seems fond of drawing such buildings, and now it appears they are lost forever. Or perhaps it is only hungry. Yes, you have bigger things to worry about. Food.
There comes the CHAOS. Taking cities as references and evidences, the chaos is here, there and everywhere because the essence knows about only the very circle of the self, in addition to the being itself. Even without wonder and experience, one cannot use his/her essence, which needs to be recognized, as a life guide. So, how is it supposed to know and control beyond the very near? To understand better, ask anyone living in the same society with you or not –even first, ask yourself: What do you feel about life? The answer, which is more or less the same, is “confused” as everyone feels the confusion, which the notion of “society” awards us. Due to the limitless probabilities coming together with “the others”, understanding clearly and organizing perfectly seem impossible for human beings. We always try to learn and experience in order to complete the blanks about others - shortly, we try to know about everything. However, every information and try creates even greater holes in the whole picture. Eventually, as time goes by, we get more and more confused. Indeed, the impossibility and the growing confusion depend on the fact that we cannot feel the essence of each and every person. Everyone besides us always feel and act differently from what our own essence suggests so. Furthermore, if it is not clear what this confusion brings us, one can just look at our persistent attempt of controlling and organizing life, which has always been failed -no matter whoever tried. There only occur some societies trying to act and think together. Still, it never gets wider due to –again- everyone’s own “essence”. The wider the togetherness is, the more balanced life is, we presume. Nevertheless, the end of this togetherness also comes sooner, mostly. Therefore, we have never experienced this togetherness, indeed. What comes next in a bigger scale is that there cannot be a single formula to respond to the chaotic existence of every society. No, there is no single solution to solve these complicated equations with multiple and multilayered variables. Most probably, there is no solution to reclaim the life from chaos, at all! Because everybody knows and feels only their own circle, we cannot truly reach and comprehend beyond our own circle. Our touch to the one’s who are out of the circle cannot get deeper to create an actual community. Therefore, we couldn’t create greater crowds than societies, actually. To conclude, we all host different essences above our heads. We all breath and feel and think and act differently. One cannot simply put all of these differences in an order. To do so, it is needed to feel the essence of everybody, meaning know about everything, which is impossible. We all live in a chaos, indefinite probabilities depending on basically everything. So, the chaos is inevitable. Why don’t we simply accept and enjoy it?
You pad across the tiny room that the drawing human calls home, and jump out a window that was opened after the ceiling fan’s sudden demise. You sniff the air, encountering a maze of scents, wafting from what could be any of the garbage heaps in a 100 meter radius. A while back, large machines would come and pick these up, but they have stopped, so that now small feasts rise up from corners of roads, untouched. You pick one and eat your fill of leftovers from some humans over-extravagant wedding celebration. Others are there, and you look with disdain upon those that do not have a human to serve them. Even though you are aware your human is on the lower echelons of this society, a drawing human with ideas for betterment that no one likes to listen to, instead of a money human with huge houses and sleek vehicles, this does not bother you. A human is a human, and living with your human and occasionally peeking at his drawings behind his shoulder has particularly heightened your sense of observation. You are able to gaze at this creaking labyrinth that the humans have constructed around you, which stretches out for miles and miles in every direction, that teeters on the edge of complete chaos, and you can understand things about it that no other cat can, and not even some humans. Your hunger sated, you stroll along the edge of a parapet, looking down at a narrow road before you. It used to be wider, but there are now stalls, vendors and beggar humans along the edge of the road, narrowing it down to a width that only 2 vehicles at a time can pass. As a result, countless vehicles lay motionless, each waiting for the one in front of it to move. Each with humans inside it, sweating and swearing. You watch as a tanned hand reaches out of one vehicle and tosses out a plastic bottle. It lands at the feet of a beggar human, sitting next to a fruit stall, unapologetically a part of the countless other humans’ torture in the scorching sun. It strikes you how the city is for an animal. It is not as a human views an animal, wild and uncivilised. But hardy and primal, an organism that takes a need and satisfies it. The way a cat would decide it is hungry, and dig into a garbage heap for a tasty morsel of chicken. The city is the organism and the humans are its cells, each trying to survive and leaving their imprint, and living with each other’s imprints, with no central brain to govern them all and create a unified order. A human needs to eat and it begs. It needs to sell fruit and it finds a spot on the street. It cannot afford electricity, so it taps into a nearby power pole. A human wants safety so it erects barriers on its street. And by cause and effect, a human sidesteps a beggar in its path. It waits in its car because a fruit stall blocks its path. It finds a different route because the street is blocked. And the human lives like this, in the most chaotic and primal arrangement in all of nature. You jump onto a roof of a nearby house and immersed in your thoughts, pad along the rooftop, jumping onto another house (placed so close to the first one that they precariously lean onto each other), and twisting your body in the next jump, land on a balcony, then use a power pole to shimmy down onto the street. Each randomly illogically placed element, a crucial step in your journey down to the ground, spaces between each element that match the coiling and release of your hind leg muscles, and you reflect that free of the constraints of path/street/road/stairs that humans face, perhaps it is only you and your fellow cats who really experience architecture, in all dimensions, horizontal and vertical. You are thinking such thoughts as you reach the end of the street, checking for cars. But you make the mistake of only looking in one direction, even though it is a one way street, and so you do not see the speeding vehicle going the wrong way, and which hits you, catapulting you across the street. Darkness follows, as your last thought is one of sadness for your human, because you’ll quite miss him.
burcu.tuncel@gmail.com
A poly-semantic hypocrite; “chaos” is the new pokerface. Let’s ask some people around the faculty whether they like chaos or not. The old-fashioned capitalist and conformist lifestyle (pardon my labelling), and the modernist-ish education we had gone through would probably shout the long way from our forebrain; “No.”; unless there are some interventions – such as; family, intellectual background and a probable number of life-changing experiences.
POST’ March 12, 2015
P.2
“Only chaos in the city can give birth to unprecedented, unpredictable existences.”
Editorial
Neris Parlak
P.3
“How come we could ever enjoy this
Well, although I have never been to India, I have read a book called “Shantaram” recently, suggested by my sister, after she travelled in India for a couple of weeks. I believe that good writers have an amazing gift to vitalise something that is so far from you. It turns out that this guy has that exceptional power, too. If we go back to our initial discussion, and ask the same question to the people in the slums of Bombay, the “punto di vista” would be ambivalent. Probably then, the connotations of the word “chaos”, which are mentioned at the beginning, starts to seem biased since that complexity becomes the source of life there, not a destroyer.
P.4 “The ghosts of which the tiny streets are now incapable of disposing.”
How would one decide what “chaos” is, when there are numerous answers to blur our minds?
Adis Kovačević
Moreover, the backbone of the chaos, I think, is not the fact of being positive or negative, but the state of being “solvable”. And solvability, for myself, is just for understanding the aspect of nonlinear complexity, came out of the smelling roses of Chaos Theory Mathematics and came down to average people. In molecular or universal dimension, chaos is a sure draw. Forget about our personal interests and excitement about the whole universe of creation. Think about the minimum chaos possible for an human being. Extract all of your interests and worries. Now you are no different than my happy pug who lives a simple happy life. The remaining source still projecting chaos, is core of it, in my architectural perspective. Even if you become the spoiled, isolated child of Richierich, you can still experience a car crash in the city and place that you live in. “City and chaos” is a frequently debated and ongoing subject. You can assign an origin to it by going eternally backwards, this is why chaos is a chaos, in the end. But theoretical-wise, and within my 750 word limit, I would rather chose a socio-anthropological focus, dated back to pre-industrial Europe. I believe the architectural theory of “city and chaos” is unthinkable without everything inside that city. Everything is both concrete and abstract, at the same time. I believe that there will be times that chaos strike all the directions we know and immobilise us. Well uncle Sennett and auntie Jacobs give me hope telling that cities can always create other directions [I do not say they are the nicest ones!]. I neither despise nor like chaos. I feel everything! Chaos is in the billion events and the people I am facing with everyday. I do need a way to understand my city’s chaos in order to be able to do something about it. Everybody should understand the chaos that they are directly in contact with. May be then it would be easier to empathise with it. It would be possible to stop the chaos of the wars which serve non-chaotically to somewhere different in the world. May be, the architectural chaos we call it would bend and compromise. May be.. May be.. But may be not, wouldn’t it?
mess?”
City and Utopia: Ideal to Whom? Tilbe Gündüz
The Point of Returning
P.5
“Why do not we simply accept and enjoy
it?”
Feel the Life Enjoy the Chaos Zeynep Elif Yelken
P.6 “It strikes you how like an animal the city is”
You Are a Cat in the City Hammad Haroon
P.6 “Designing a city is like a filling a frame while taking photo”
Link between Taking Photographs and Designing a City Çağlan Çelebi
P.7
“Chaos is the new pokerface.”
Unsolvable Solution Burcu Tuncel
POST’ure 2015
Issue #2
Guest Editor Neris Parlak
Editorial Board
Emre Coşkuner Cem Dedekargınoğlu Hayri Dörtdivanlıoğlu Aslıhan Günhan Buse Ezgi Sökülmez Merve Şahin Melek Pınar Uz
Graphic Design
Link Between Taking Photographs and Designing a City
Hayri Dörtdivanlıoğlu Merve Şahin
cağlan çelebi
Printing
caglancelebi@gmail.com
Berk Print House, Altındağ | Ankara
Position of your model is quite important for taking a photograph, for example a portrait one; the whole impression of your photograph is depended to how you locate your model. You can either fill your frame with model, or give some space. It’s your design!
Contact
Designing a city is like a filling a frame while taking photograph, for instance, deciding how people circulate in your city, you can give what they want in different ways. You can use symmetry, giving what they want in predictable ways or you can design some surprises for them. It’s your design! In a photograph, do you like photographs filled with only subject in basic way, or do you want to discover more? In a city, do you like long, perfect, same corridors/streets, or do you like some variability, disorder, chaos? It’s all about frame! Thanks to Jale Erzen to get me inspired.
POST’ure Student Bulletin Department of Architecture Middle East Technical University 06800 Çankaya|Ankara|TURKEY +90 312 210 7287 posturenews@gmail.com posturenews.tumblr.com @posturenews /posturenews