Research Colloquium with Burcu Serdar Köknar
On Wednesday, the 12th of January the third Research Colloquium of this semester will take place online. Our guest, Burcu Serdar Köknar from MEF University will be presenting her research project. The title of her talk is „The structure and the garden. Understanding the Garden as a strategy of architecture and placemaking“. Following the presentation, we will open the floor for questions and discussion.
If you are interested in this topic, don't miss out on the chance of meeting Burcu Serdar Köknar and learning from her experience.
Students of Architecture, Graphic Design & Visual Communication, Digital Business and Business Administration are more than welcome to join for some meaningful interdisciplinary learning. Get inspired, learn new perspectives!
The Research Colloquium is open to everyone and will be conducted online. Click here to join the lecture on Wednesday virtually.
About Burcu Serdar Köknar
Burcu Serdar Köknar is one of the founders of anonim.istanbul where she continues working as a professional design consultant. Her research areas are interdisciplinary approaches in architectural design, participatory and collective design processes, education in architecture and design-learning by making, urban commons and design, urban agriculture and design, and integration of landscape design and architecture at various scales.
She received her graduate degree from ITU in 2001 with her thesis ‘An investigation of spatial interfaces into the urban life’. She started working and researching in the field of landscape design and became interested in the simultaneous and overlapping areas between architecture and landscape design at various scales.
About the project
With the emergence of spatial segregation in the actual political landscapes of the cities, which is also related to the climate crisis, citizen-initiated places come to the stage to create new commons. Urban community gardens emerge as an important strategic and political strategy to create new commons even though they are not that new. They could be studied for critical strategies of architecture and a placemaking tool.
Berlin, with its significant number of urban commons, is the home of many urban green areas. People are involved in their making, use, and management. This research investigates the process of Prinzessinnengarten and the making of the structure, Die Laube in Prinzessinnengarten, as a new architectural narrative and emerging as a placemaking strategy, eventually becoming an actor itself in a community-making tool by providing an open-ended platform for production. This research aims to contribute empirically and theoretically to new placemaking strategies for architecture within the context of neoliberal urbanization, with open processes and collaborative practices. The reflections on the findings of this research are used in research-based design studios and new discussions extend the debate around the design process of open structures.