istanbulmetro . istanbul architecture design

Emerging hyperarchaic design from Istanbul, “Fibrous Room: Evolving Structural Logic”

January 21st, 2008

Architecture in Turkey today is largely a matter of concrete and cement. Steel reinforced concrete formed largely by hand in rectilinear shapes, this is how we create our buildings. Contemporary architecture in Turkey consists of large boxes full of smaller boxes of concrete with no curve or acute angle that could provide difficulty in construction or cost. This has been case in our building culture since the 1940s and does not seem set to change anytime soon.

The reason for steel reinforced concrete construction is clear. Compared to steel and wood construction it is relatively inexpensive and does not require highly skilled labor to produce.  Having been for some many years the primary way of building in Turkey has meant that the whole building culture from architect to engineer, contractor to construction worker and public officials charged with regulating building understand the basic details of this  simple building technology as the lingua franca of construction in Turkey.

The hegemony of reinforced concrete structures has had some peculiar affects on our architecture.  For many years, architects influenced directly and subconsciously by it have resorted to what we can call for lack of better word, lego architecture, an architecture of square and rectangle blocks piled up to create a wide variety of orthogonally shaped concrete structures. In the 1980s and 90s, some of our leading architects, Nevzat Sayın, Emre Arolat, Han Tümertekin and Can Çinicı took this type of square building to its limits to create a highly simplified almost archaic sense of abstract and geometric contemporaneity from square geometric architecture not seen anywhere else in the world. Recently others most notably the architect/decorator Eren Talu have farcically limited their forms to just squares developing a signature style that has been crudely understood under the cliché term of minimalist design. Even worse has been the emergence of a kitsch neo-classicism of boxy building with facades with applied classical architectural decoration.

It would be fair to say that not since Mimar Sinan’s great dome structures of the 17^th century  has our architecture produced anything meaningful that wasn’t based on a 90 degree angle and that wasn’t made with concrete.  Architectonic expression and material experimentation, the great themes of 20^th century architecture have eluded our architects to a great extent.

It is in this context that it was almost miraculous to see the current exhibition at the GG gallery in Beyoglu focusing specifically on the themes of experimentation in concrete and form in an exhibit entitled, “Fibrous Room: Evolving Structural Logic” (Strüktürel Mantığı Araştırmak: Lifli Oda) organized by the architects Claudia Pasquero, Marco Poletto and Nilufer Kozikoğlu that will be on display to March 8. The exhibition by these three graduates of the Architectural Association in London are the result of  research efforts by teams from the AA and School of Architecture at the Istanbul Technical University. Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto are founders of ecoLogicStudio in London. Graduates of EE (Environment and Energy) MA in Architectural Association (AA) and are currently running AA INTER10Unit. Nilüfer Kozikoğlu has graduated from the DRL (Design Research Laboratory) at the AA, and currently runs her studio in Istanbul.

The exhibition at GG is the end result of this group’s efforts to extrapolate form in the union of concrete and 3D computer investigations into structure especially the current global interest in digital parametric architecture. Or in the words of the organizers, “ “Fibrous Structures” is an investigation into the emergent properties of complex cementitious structures when parametrically defined and modelled through a weaving organizational logic.”    Or to put it simply, this exhibition shows how interesting forms can be created by simply injecting a mix of cement and fiberglass into a clump of large interwoven hoses and allowing them to dry. Over the three months of the exhibition at GG these hoses filled with concrete cand drawn through a complex steel frame in a weave pattern derived parametric design software.  The hoses hung crudely  on loops with strings  (this is the weakest part of the architects design and seems like it should it been solved more elegantly) will eventually be removed to reveal the dynamic weaved concrete and fibre structure of hoses.

The importance of this exhibition is this new form, this weave of concrete, both structurally and aesthetic expressive, suggesting a new type of 21^st century architecture originating out of Istanbul broken out of the concrete box that has long inhibited design in Turkey.  In the Turkish architectural perspective, the groups working methodology integrating the newest digital parametric computing technologies with premodern practices such as basket weaving and the mathematically based abstract geometric principals of Islamic and nomad art is an extremely important investigation into the possibilities of local practice merged with universal technique. As such, this union of the very new and the very old represents the emergence of a new type of architecture and design principal that I have been calling hyperarchaic. (Other examples include the work of the Barbarian independent design group, Xurban.net collective and Norman Foster and Tabanlioglu Mimarlik’s hyperarchaic monumental pyramid in Astana, Kazakhstan ) This approach creating new forms and efficiencies suggests and reaffirms the importance of the geography of Istanbul, fusing eastern and western knowledge and modern and premodern ways of doing things into a new episteme. It is my assertion, however grand, that the hyperarchaism in the creation of architecture and design by mathematical and critical processes and not by metaphor seen in the example provided  by Kozikoglu, Pasquero and Poletto has not been created here in a formal way since the days of Sinan.  Overall the design process through the investigations at both the AA and ITU by these innovative thinkers is the first time in a long time these basic issues of concrete, digital architecture and mathematics have brought together in such a “concrete” way. It is shocking that it has taken our design culture so permeated by concrete buildings this long to create this kind of innovation in architectural that is a statement about the possibilities of building in cementitious materials.  Thanks go to the design team and students, the sponsors - the engineering firm of Adams Kara Taylor, the concrete company Lafarge and the GG Gallery and its directory, Pelin Dervis, who after many exhibits with little relevance to Istanbul’s design culture have with this exhibit made a historic contribution.

Entry Filed under: architecture