Low budget projects are mostly a waste of time. No matter what intellectual effort you put chances are pretty high that the product is going to look bad up close in detail, specially for projects in the East. In these types of buildings your enthusiasm will not be acknowledged and shared by the cheap workmanship and cheap construction materials used on the building. Everyone is going to be there on site to get the job done quickly with as little effort as possible and then get out. The massing and site diagram of the project could be flawless, but detailing of the structure will be a mess no matter how often you visit the construction site. Modules will be executed optionally, causing a disastrous chain reaction of aesthetic catastrophes, railings and other building components such as window sills will not be in harmony regarding color palates and material properties. All construction materials will be selected by the subcontractor based on price, not on compositional compatibility. Architecture does not have immunity from the bitter toughness of capitalism, just like any other profession except for music and the visual arts such as painting and sculpting. A good musician can sit down with sticks and stones or a broken guitar and produce acceptable art work, but in the highly collaborative profession of architecture its different; budget really does make a huge difference. Continue reading →

Photo of Halime Hanim Türbesi in Van, 2004

Over the past years of meetings, contrary to my initial expectations, I have been pleasantly surprised to realize how policy makers and developers tend to side with long term urban integrity and rational architecture.

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The more I think of it, the more I believe that Marcel Duchamp’s “fountain” is a disgrace to the art world.

If he had not put that urinal in display arguing that any stupid thing could replace excellency in craft, we wouldn’t have had todays shallow pop culture. He enticed hoards of untalented wanna be artists into the world of art. Degrading humanity all together. Continue reading →

An architect can try to do all his best, but if the culture is unwilling to accept the value of buildings he is just wasting his time.

Not only is an architect challenged while designing and implementing artistic common sense during interdisciplinary collaboration, but what he gets built after the design process is also heavily vulnerable to constant civic sabotage and his intellectual intent to constant vandalization. Continue reading →

A city is an unnatural habitat for human beings and is no different than a cancer tissue on Earth, which grows and grows until it destroys its host by turning natural wildernesses into concrete and steel jungles.

Similar to how our digestive systems are not yet evolved and adopted to agricultural inventions such as bread and rice (Which is clearly the case when the levels of insulin and sugar in our blood streams are analyzed after consuming these products), living cramped with more than two million people in a 800km2 area is also a social invention which both our psychological and physiological systems are not adopted to. And looking at the slow rate of evolution through out the history of men, it is highly unlikely that we will ever adopt to big cities in the next few millennia.  Continue reading →

I am often asked by close people wether I am happy or not living in the city of Adana; a city where I recently discovered that even Syrian refugees despise. Upon some small talk at the streets of istanbul last weekend, one Syrian guy told me that only the stupid Syrians stayed in Adana. And this happens to be the city that I live and work in. Continue reading →