The six practices were selected from nominations by international advisory boards. London practices were proposed by Tom Dyckhoff, Anna Liu, Justin McGuirk, Farshid Moussavi, Robert Mull and Jeremy Till. Istanbul practices were proposed by Can Altay, Burak Altinisik, Ihsan Bilgin, Ahmet Ozguner, Hakan Sengun, Levent Senturk and Pelin Tan.
London Practices:
David Kohn Architects is a London-based practice established in 2007. Recent projects include an award-winning temporary restaurant at the Royal Academy of Arts, an art gallery in London's West End and an ongoing collaboration with the Arcola Theatre. Across the work is an interest in maintaining an open relationship between form and use, inviting provisional occupation, and affirming delight as central to architectural production. Prior to setting up his own practice, David worked for ten years in leading practices in New York, Paris and London, notably as project architect of the Gagosian Gallery Britannia Street and the Museum of Childhood, both of which won RIBA Awards.
Set up in 2006, Studio Weave have worked on a number of art and architecture projects from providing architectural support to a parental school campaign in Camden, to enlivening a public space in the City of London with boomerang-shaped wooden street furniture, to their latest installation, a fanciful cabin on the bank of Kielder Water, Northumberland. Their designs seek to realise 'narrative environments' through playing into and exploring the stories of spaces and the relationships developed within them.
Founded in 2005, 00:/ [Zer'o Zer'o] is a research-driven design practice focused on reimagining, re-thinking, re-designing and re-organising place. In addition to delivering architectural and urban design projects, they support physical and spatial interventions through socio-economic research. The practice works at the scale of the city-region and the everyday, from designing a low-carbon home in Oxfordshire to a series of The Hub workplaces in Milan and London's Kings Cross and South Bank created specifically for social entrepreneurs. (Image, top)
Istanbul Practices:
Asli Kiyak Ingin
Asli K. Ingin is an architect,
designer and activist who holds a specific interest in how state intervention
to the urban fabric of a city affects some of the poorest residents; practicing
an architecture theory that goes beyond technical and aesthetic issues to
embody the social, cultural and economical realities of urban space. Over the
last three years for example, Kiyak Ingin has established the Sulukule Platform
to protect the old Romany District of Sulukule in Istanbul and its residents
from demolition, instead demonstrating and campaigning for sustainable and
participatory models for the neighbourhood development.
Photo: Oguz Meric, Sulukule, 2008
Bogachan Dundaralp (ddrlp)
Forming
ddrlp in 2005, Bogachan
Dundaralp focuses in on the design and application of "building systems", including modular school and housing systems, developed alongside with technical know-how research, for earthquake areas. With several architecture awards to his name, including AMV Young Architect Prize (2004), two National Architecture Prizes (2006) and YEM (Building Industry Center) Award (2008), he was invited with the Stüdyo*KAHEM by curator Hou Hanru to 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007), where he worked on the criticism of modernity and architecture. Previously Dundaralp had collaborated with artist Cildo Meireles within the 8th Istanbul Biennial (2003).
Founded by Nilufer Kozikoglu in 2004, Tuspa NK is an environment design practice based on research into material, spatial, social and conceptual organization. This approach has been implemented in various fields including public, governmental and private commissions as well as self-initiated research projects. In all the projects there exists a search for a system or pattern to the design model that can be replicated and built upon within the next. One sequence of works for example revolves around spaces of psychiatry. A general hospital unit the practice designed for the German Red Cross (Bolu 2000) was refitted by the practice themselves when the unit was converted into psychiatric clinic in 2005. This led to the preliminary master-plan design for the Bakirkoy Psychiatric Hospital (2008).
