Hatice Cansu Cürgen

Istanbul Technical University

Faculty of Architecture

P75 | PROVOCATION in Taksim Square | a sound+performance building.

by Hatice Cansu Cürgen  



The discipline-restricted evaluations of both ‘the architecture is merely the design-in-space’ and ‘music is a design-in-time’ are gradually being replaced by non-disciplinary approaches. Conceivably, such a design experiment may provoke the emergence of rhizomatic trans-types rather than the inherited hierarchical arrangements. The new music is organized sounds and brings itself into existence through the potentials of space; it creates spaces. The new space on the other hand, internalizes time in itself and interprets the body in space-time. On the other hand, the project site in Taksim adds a different semantic dimension and intellectual responsibility since it is a unique venue of Istanbul where sounds are heard the most, where people are most visible and see both those they want to see and those they ignore. Taksim is the venue of a potential provocation and the project uses the unchanging actors of a provocative event while shaping its own structure and spaces. Actors such as the state, agent and mole, contribute to the organization of the space and the development of the program via their diverse characteristics and their interactive relationships. The architectural object is perceived as a body, and it is considered as a skin which becomes space-time by folding, unfolding and twisting itself. The following questions have guided the process of design: How a life or an event emerge where the subject and object touch each other? How the body, sound and space could coexist without congealing, neither functionally nor formally?


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Hatice Cansu Cürgen  was born in Izmit, Turkey in 1988. She lives and works in Istanbul. She has studied architecture at the Istanbul Technical University and the Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza.” Her graduate thesis work titled ‘Provocation’ won the second prize at the Archiprix 2011 Turkey Competition and the project appeared in national and international exhibitions. After her graduation with honours, she started practicing architecture in KPM Architectural Design Studio (2011-2013) and meanwhile she participated in the 1st Istanbul Design Biennial with a KPM project called ‘The Bomb’. She attended many international collaborative design workshops and round table discussions including GSAPP Columbia, UCL University of Cape Town and UN Studio Amsterdam. Currently, she is a graduate student at the ITU Architectural Design Program. Methods and strategies in architectural thinking, architectural design paradigms and programmable structures are some research topics she is interested in. She is a member of a non-profit and independent architecture organization, Architecture For All and recently works as a project coordinator.