Titled "Architecture as Measure", the Turkish pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, seeks to explore what and how architecture can contribute to the environment in the light of the current climate crisis, beyond technological dependence. Curated by Neyran Turan, the pavilion will be on display at the country's long-term venue, the Sale d’Armi, Arsenale from May 22nd to November 21st, 2021.
Architect and professor Neyran Turan will be joining forces with E. Ece Emanetoğlu, Melis Uğurlu, Betsy Clifton, Samet Mor, and Ian Erickson for the creation of the pavilion. The exhibition is organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, and will "define the planetary as the vast geo-temporal scales through which climate emergency accelerates".
It starts with the provocation that instead of seeing planetary imagination purely as an isolated idea of preserving nature, or as technological management or as visualization, it is important, at this moment, for architecture to consider its potential from within its inner workings.-- Curatorial Team
Answering the question of 'how will we live together?', the Turkish pavilion focuses on the politics and logistics of architectural construction, aligning them with their respective planetary counterparts through the geographies of material extraction, supply chains, and maintenance in Turkey and the world. The exhibition, which will include an installation, a website publication, and storytelling, highlights the state of urgency that the world has come to, and defines architecture as a measure to provoke a radical change and an alternative planetary imagination that can help evaluate our life on Earth and our roles in relation to one another.
The installation consists of four dioramas, each focusing on specific sites of architecture, and exploring topics of focus through four different formats—Paperwork, Episodes, Conversations, and Essays. The Paperwork section displays the exhibition’s main research and visual content regarding the bureaucracy of architectural documents of extraction, maintenance, logistics, and construction. The Episodes section captures environmental controversies in a series of selected sites in Turkey. And finally, the Conversations and the Essays sections present various invited contributions that tackle the exhibition's theme.
Why the emphasis on imagination at this moment when urgent action is already overdue? It is precisely because of the exigency of our current moment that we are driven to the significance of imagination. First, imagination matters because, as evidenced with the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests throughout the world, the intricacies of systemic injustice and climate emergency call for unconventional approaches that can make sense of the collision between the quotidian and the planetary—the vast geo-temporal scales through which climate emergency accelerates. -- Curatorial Team
Architecture as Measure
- Organizer: Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV)
- Support: Department of Architecture at the College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
- Sponsors: Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Turkey and Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Co-Sponsors: SCHUCO and Vitra
- Curator: Neyran Turan
- Co-Curators: E. Ece Emanetoğlu, Melis Uğurlu, Betsy Clifton, Samet Mor, and Ian Erickson
Neyran Turan
Neyran Turan is an architect and a partner at NEMESTUDIO. She is currently Associate Professor at the University of California-Berkeley. Her architecture studio has been recognized with several awards, such as the 2016 Architectural League New York Prize for Young Architects, the 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016 The Architects' Newspaper Best of Design Awards, and multiple Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts awards. Neyran's work focuses on alternative forms of environmental imagination and their capacity for new aesthetic and political trajectories within architecture and urbanism.
