Using two quite disjunct channels, architecture and its product, the building, occurred more frequently than before in the entrepreneurial and madcap urban environments of post-1980. The building either became, directly as its very self, an effective medium for the politics of the day, or, within the trend mechanisms of the day, it occupied the environment through the visual values that took shape with it. It can easily be claimed that during this period, the latter lagged in comparison with the former, both because it was much flimsier, and as a quite naïve channel when compared with the pragmatic realities of the former.

This new environment outside of the world of architecture also put the architects who produced those buildings on the agenda, in a way never experienced until then. After that, certain buildings ceased to be talked about exclusively within that world, a fact which for years had grieved the world of architecture. And what’s more, certain buildings or projects were now being mentioned not in conjunction with their investors’ or contractors’ names, as was always the complaint, but in conjunction with their architects’ name. And today, we can finally speak of an amateur audience other than architects. This group problematizes not only the quantitative inputs to which it has direct access, but even the design motivations that determine the success of the project. In fact, it reasons, dissects and comments in a way that shows so much initiative that this time it angers the world of architecture.

Today, apart from, or maybe even opposed to the fact that the architect is valued outside of the architectural world, and that he/she is glorified with such exaggeration that even the architects themselves are taken aback, there might also be a danger of being trivialized by the world outside to the degree that he/she is unable to expand and enrich his/her own inner world. It will be interesting to think of this opposition together with the fact that certain milieus of the modern world, both within and outside the profession, somehow manage to approach each other, blend, and gradually become homogenized. However, another subject that rates a lengthy discussion is how the architectural environment has lately been finding it difficult to re-produce itself, and to what degree it faces the danger of gradually becoming stunted. In an environment where the number of those whose sole motivation is to protect their status and those who are quite content with both themselves and the world is increasing at an astonishing rate; this discussion may also trigger a debate on how and at what rate architecture can become socialized. And it is obvious that this shallow and introverted situation is not peculiar only to Turkey…

In our studio, where we produce many different subjects and on many different scales, we aim to maintain an architectural design practice focused on “situation” and to develop this through the potentials inherent to it. This is a practice based on identifying the individual problems of each project, of each special situation, distinguishing their particular inputs, and looking for answers to the situation that has now become specific through a description that is as stratified as possible. Familiar styles, motivations of architectural movements, and design conventions are introduced at times, however, a noteworthy investment in these are put off each time. This tendency also problematizes a sort of aspiration to be consistent, which is rather widespread in the milieu and which pins its hopes on the kinship in the appearance of buildings produced. For instance, a design might loosen the specific parameters of the situation faced in each project, and determine its entire motive, while practically ignoring, so as to achieve a building that is as plain, spare and purified as possible; we do not strictly distinguish the unconditional choice of such a design from that which chooses, as a general attitude, to be expressionistic or polyphonic from the outset. We believe that the situation of “being chosen in a mechanical way”, which is the fundamental characteristic of the seemingly antipodal two attitudes, uproots them both from the real world and renders them no different from one another.

And we hope that our design tendency, which could be called a sort of “tropism”, will be able to reach the marks of its inherent consistency – if there is such a thing – through the “quest for awareness” in the process of redefining each time what is to be conceived. However, we must add right away that this quest does not aim for a “perfect” kind of consistency that healthy, adult and civilized human beings supposedly have. We might even say that the attitude in question is one that senses that such consistency can never be achieved and that once it starts to grasp the world in this way, it considers it important to understand and take seriously the nonconformities of that world. This is an attitude in which the creative subjects – the persons in charge of the design –, just like the product they create, feel that they themselves are not entirely free of these nonconformities, in which they question each time both the situation and themselves instead of forming consistent systems, instead of playing it safe, and contenting themselves with what suits their best interest.

We feel that the design process acquires an appeal that is open to a gradual deepening through the individualities of the subject who conditions it and through the fantasy it will rediscover in itself. At this point it can be claimed that the phenomenon we consider important and which we expect will take its place in the process alongside awareness is “consciousness”. “Consciousness” forces the multilayered and two-edged game, which occupies the zone between matter and the intellect, to fit somewhere within the framework of passion, intuition, knowledge and breeding. The moment it is introduced, it begins to condition the work and thanks to it the potentials created by the fact that it is possible to continue to work on the piece forever are abandoned at one go but just at the right time and in moderation. Consciousness turns the work into a project while reminding us of the presence of incompleteness and two-edgedness and the futility of the quest for maturity.