border/ space/ connection

One of the things we noticed at Tarlabasi during our first visit was the rope they use to hang their laundry, the rope is tied to two houses, this way it creates a visible connection between the two bay windows, and this activity is about communicating and exchanging news and information.
We made this model to express how a spatial element can express a social networking within the urban space.

ROPE- communication/ interaction/ culture

Isolating the detail

Through our first visit at those areas we documented various elements and materials that are adapted to the social and urban texture of the sites. It is quite obvious that the actual method the inhabitants use to produce space, to decorate the existing space and to enhance public space is giving different uses and social meanings to local, cheap everyday elements. This is part of the amazing mobility and constant interaction between the inhabitants, which characterizes both areas and which is one of the things we aim to maintain and promote. For example, people just used a wooden fruit box, facing backwards to create a coffee table or a combination of tires, canvas sacks and barrels to make stands for the street markets. Even the hanging baskets that can be found at the streets of those areas nave a meaning, it’s a local media of connection between the balconies as the locals use them to exchange various things without moving out of their houses. Those are just a few examples of the urban informality those people are experiencing, which is an extension of their culture and their reality. Both sites own much of their vibrancy and heterogeneity to those unprogrammed spaces, they create a blank canvas for the citizens and their activities. They give the neighborhood an enviable diversity and a characteristic locality through the many unplanned, temporary meeting places for a rich mix of social and ethnic groups.

Informal Istanbul

Frank Gehry's house/

Frank Gehry is known as a decostruntive architect. In 1974 Gehry reshaped his house in Santa Monica with completely reused material such as wood frame, corrugated metal and chain link. 

Tadashi Kawamata/ “Favela Plan” (1994)

Kawamata creates projects which border on installation and architecture, his artistic interventions are focused on urban sites. Despite that fact, his work is not limited to an architectural study, on the contrary he really gets involved with the social aspect of the regions he is working on. Usually he produces models and in situ installations using wood. The "Favela Plan" is a study of the architectural forms and typologies of the favela in Sao Paolo.

image from Art Basel Miami Beach

Creating space by reusing materials.

"Brilliant Boxel Pavilion" built From 2,000 Beer Boxes, created by Students from theUniversity of Applied Sciences in Detmold.


Fireplace for children, Haugen Zohar Arkitekter

"The Pallet house" by Matthias Loebermann is a structure made entirely from shipping pallets, ground anchors, and tie rods. Designed to be easily assembled and dismantled, and then entirely recycled at a later date, the resulting building is intended as a temporary meeting place.

Installation "Built to Wear", constructed for the 2009 Shenzhen Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism.

"Goat Milking Shed" by the University of Colorado, Denver, The built-in seating make it a place for human habitation too, and it rises from a core of gabion boxes filled with reused concrete tailings.