1989 BERLIN – ERASING THE URBAN BOUNDARY

When Germany, which was alone and the evil power of the Second World War with the influence of its rulers, was defeated, the effects of this were very effective on Germany. Especially the capital city of Berlin had become a playground for his enemies. So much so that the city was divided in the middle by a physical wall (hence it was divided in Germany, East and West Germany). While West Germany was under the influence of capitalist Europe and the US, East Germany was under the influence of the socialist USSR.

Germany after WW2

However, the Berlin wall was not erected immediately at the end of the war. After the wall was built in 1961, 12 years after the defeat of Germany in 1949, a real separation occurred. Of course, architectural approaches also got their share from this situation. The west of the city went to a capitalist construction and modern buildings were seen a lot. In the east, monumental structures and buildings reflecting political power and socialism were built.

The wall was not only a wall, but also contained watchtowers. The existence of the wall, on the other hand, caused the city to spread over a wider area than it should have been. In addition, Plattenbau (mass housing projects built with prefabricated concrete slabs), which can be seen in all Soviet countries, were also formed in Berlin.

Plattenbau

When the calendars showed 1989, it was decided to remove the wall, whose necessity was questioned, and the city was united again. After the fall of the wall, there was a sociological turmoil in the city. From an architectural point of view, in the continuation of this combination, the Soviet-influenced buildings in Berlin were also removed, just as the ideas in people’s minds were tried to be removed. What was effective in this was the victory of capitalism, which was also under the influence of the former West Germany, in the ideological conflict of that period.

Berlin Wall removal

1940 Rotterdam Carpet Bombing

Rotterdam was built beside a dam and was utilized for trade and commerce. Since the city was flooded, water has become an integral feature of the city. As a result, dikes have become increasingly significant in city development.

Because of its non-expandable terrain, the city grew overcrowded in the early 1900s. Because of the anticipated circumstances that would allow for economic development and mobility, as well as the port’s lack of infrastructure, the city needed to be renovated and modernized.

A growing desire for civic culture by a group of top port entrepreneurs and corporate executives has aided in the modernization and restructuring of the city. W. G. Witteveen and the Rotterdam Architects Society developed two distinct concepts: Opbouw and Opbouw (Building Up). The Witteveen concept included boulevards and avenues dominating the city, as well as magnificent urban places such as the Coolsingel. On the other side, Opbouw’s strategy was to break the customary perimeter blocks and establish a direct relationship between the cityscape and the building.

The city of Rotterdam was bombarded by Nazis on May 14, 1940. It was only a 15-second warning, but the carnage was massive. Many of the bombed-out structures caught fire. There was a significant amount of material damage. The Fire Line follows the burned-out city center’s perimeter.

After bombing – Rotterdam 14 May 1940

It was a calamity unlike any we’d seen before. We’ve seen natural calamities and their effects on the city, but this time it was man-made rather than natural. The end consequence, though, was the same. The city is changing. The Carpet Bombing may also be viewed as a chance to restore the city. What I mean is that the city has to be upgraded and altered. It was not enough for future generations, as we discussed. Attempts were made in the early 1900s, and bombing hastened the process.

1922 Great Fire of Izmir

Great Fire of İzmir – 1922

At the beginning of the 20th century, İzmir contained 5 groups of people who were separated from each other at certain rates and whose income level was determined according to their ethnic groups and spread throughout the city. If we count these areas and different cultures, we come across Turks, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, and Franks.

Although this fire took place in the Republican period, since it was still an early period, the groups and the characteristics of these groups reflected the characteristics of the Ottoman period. In this context, when we look at people from different cultures, Turks had a middle-class income level. They had wooden and clean houses. The Greeks, that is, Greeks were in a weak position in terms of status and were not considered hygienic. The Jews, on the other hand, were the poorest group in Izmir, although they showed themselves as the wealthy and engaged in commerce in the world. Armenians lived in the outer parts of the city and represented the merchant segment. The Franks were the most wealthy in the city. They lived in stone houses. The reason why these houses are mentioned is that there were advantages and disadvantages of two different types of houses. Although stone houses were resistant to fire, they were at risk of collapse in an earthquake. Wooden houses, on the other hand, were earthquake resistant but vulnerable to fire. In addition, it was more attractive for middle and lower-income levels with its cheap construction cost.

Fires, on the other hand, were not unprecedented events in the history of Izmir. It even started fires frequently, and the city’s firefighters found a solution to this situation. When there was a fire, pumps that took water from the sea were used so that the fires could be extinguished quickly. However, things did not go well in the fire of 1922, and three-quarters of the city was destroyed in the fire.

Plans of the new İzmir after the fire

An organized group was formed for restructuring and positive transformation in the post-fire process. Nobody owned it as all property was destroyed by fire, and it was like starting a brand new book. Areas destroyed by fire were rearranged according to the current population. While doing this, the cultural park was taken as a reference. Rather than the existing texture, they wanted a new and modern city and wanted to change the texture.

İzmir – 1930

Analysis of Crip Camp

“The world doesn’t want us around and wants us dead. We live with that reality, so there’s always gonna be, uh, ‘Am I gonna survive? Am I gonna push back? Am I gonna fight to be here?’ that’s always true. So, if you wanna call that anger, I call it kind of drive. You know, you have to be willing to thrive or you’re not going to make it.” – Corbett O’Toole

One of the most inspiring documentaries I’ve ever seen.

An outstanding documentary on how a hippie formation near Woodstock in 1971 called camp Jened, better known as crip camp, helped start the disability rights movement.

The couple michelle and barack obama produced this wonderful documentary on the rights of the disabled, which is the part of the civil rights movement that is overlooked after women’s rights, black rights and lgbtq rights.

In a way, Jened camp, a safe haven for disabled young people who have come away from their isolating world, where they can speak their minds openly, becomes the starting point of a revolution. Once the group of young people with disabilities find a place where they feel they belong, they also have the power to defeat the US government. The struggle of these great people for American disability law was also a struggle for equality for their peers around the world. they fought for their right to exist and they won. They opened our eyes to a world we know so little about.

Through this wonderful documentary, which allows us to connect deeply with these important political issues that we did not realize, and thanks to these young people who became political activists and got what they wanted, we realized that; Even if you can pass a law, it won’t mean much until you change society’s attitudes.

The Era of Corporate Social Responsibility is Ending

Each of us has a responsibility to think about the best interests of our environment and society. Companies are also liable for returning what they have taken. When firms are included, it is referred to as corporate social responsibility. Now is a period when businesses are attempting to develop sustainable techniques and products. They also create campaigns to address issues such as poverty, water scarcity, climate change, and so on. In truth, we were the ones who made it happen. People are looking for more sustainable brands and cruelty-free items as a culture. Brands began to devote more resources to their social media public relations and marketing operations. They stated that their companies employ sustainable products or that a product purchased will aid in the education of youngsters.

These kind of events bring people and brands closer together. However, the issue here is that the term “corporation” limits the concept of social responsibility. Because the belief that only firms with a lot of money can organize such events and campaigns to assist the environment and society inhibits people’s ability to do better. Some people work behind the scenes of these businesses, attempting to give back. Because the world belongs to us, and every citizen bears responsibility for its preservation. We cannot delegate this responsibility just to large corporations.

To be able to serve your society, you must first understand what they care about, but people should be at the core of your giving, and they should be empowered as good agents. These were taught to me in a TED talk that I recently watched. Rachel Hutchisson, a corporate social responsibility employee, emphasizes that the business aspect of social responsibility is about the end. Consumers and communities come together to help companies live longer because people began to bring their friends and family with them. Understanding your community as a business should be just as important as understanding your brand’s interests. Humans should take precedence over corporations.

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

A major component of social transformation is a social movement. It is a group effort to bring about large-scale societal changes. Today, I’ll discuss three major social movements and how they attempt to achieve their objectives in their own unique methods.

Suffragette!

The movie Suffragette is the story of a group of women fighting for their rights and is based on true events in history. It is set in London in the early 20th century. In the movie, these women who are fed up with overwork and bad working conditions, exposed to ill-treatment, wanting to be treated equally to men and trying to get their rights, call themselves “Suffragettes”, which is also the source of the movie’s title. They believe that they will get nowhere by talking and that they can achieve their goals with active action.

Offical Trailer of Suffragette

Although at first they want to achieve results in a non-violent way, they later decide that it will not work. Because according to them, men understand violence.

Gandhi and Non-Violence

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Gandhi was the leading role in the resistance towards India’s independence from the British Empire. This event took place at the beginning of the 20th century, between the two world wars. Gandhi became an inspiring symbol for human rights and freedom, both in India and around the world. Unlike the previous example, Gandhi was against violence and favored bringing people together and carrying out resistance peacefully. He has spent his entire life defending what he believes in. For him, the key to success was not division, but unity. He united the people and stood against violent riots and protests.

Salt March

The Salt March is the action led by Gandhi to protest the British colonial rule in India. Thousands of Indians followed him for 400 kilometers. Although 60,000 people and Gandhi were eventually arrested, this march rekindled the spirit of freedom in the people.

US Civil Rights Movements

Even though the American Civil War was supposed to put an end to slavery, African Americans continued to face bigotry afterward. They are treated as second-class citizens by the majority of the population. Peaceful protests began the anti-racism movement. Hundreds more others were also drawn to the protests by the media. Civil rights activism began to gain popularity. Following that, African-Americans began to cast ballots. However, some people start to transform these peaceful protests into violent acts. Assassinations of civil rights activists have persisted.

We are still dealing with these issues after all these years. They haven’t been solved yet. People are still fighting for equal rights, colonization, and other issues. It’s tragic that so many people, so many lives, have been lost for the sake of a cause. It could provide solace to those who have sacrificed their lives if their causes were successful, which they were in some ways. I hope that just because we are still dealing with these issues does not indicate that they will continue indefinitely. I may argue that everybody is successful in their own way, yet even nonviolent actions result in deaths. There is no “correct” way to do things, in my opinion, because everyone tries their hardest.

Social Change

When the majority of society begins to embrace new habits that have significant effects, social transformation occurs. Parts often clash as a result of these alterations. It could be about the environment, technology, culture, social transformations, or political challenges, among other things. We live in a world where there is starvation, violence of all kinds, natural disasters, and so on. We have the technology and the power to make a difference, but we don’t. People who are confronted with grave difficulties do not have the political power to address them. When you consider the concept of social change, it’s easy to become overwhelmed, yet everything has to start somewhere. Societal changes do not occur over night. It takes time to bring individuals together and develop a community that is dedicated to a common objective.

Berlin Wall – 1989

‘’Social transformation requires engaged communities, not heroes,” says Gerardo Calderon in a TED talk on the subject. He is an El Salvadorian activist. His narrative really intrigued me because of the analogy he made between community and superheroes. He believes that in order to make a meaningful change in society, we must get together and act as a group. He included Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and others as examples of great icons and how they were perceived as heroes in his address. That perception may be accurate or what we want to believe, but they are essentially ordinary people who rose to become community leaders, gained the support of a large number of people, and worked together to accomplish something significant for their society. In Turkey, Atatürk is revered as a national hero. However, we can deduce from every history lesson that he was not alone. He took the initiative and changed our country for the better with the help of his colleagues and, especially, the Turkish people. As can be seen, these individuals are exceptional leaders, not superheroes who command the respect of their peers.

Greenpeace Protest – Admiralty Arch 2019

It is not difficult to start a social movement and assist it in becoming a social change. The concept that doing anything worthwhile will take a lot of time and energy, and possibly money, is not valid. Others are attempting to make a difference through organizing walks, lectures, and gatherings of people who share similar goals and viewpoints. That is the starting point for societal change. Calderon’s example of organizing night runs in the city to combat the notion that people do not go outside at night shows how individuals may make a difference by doing something simple but successful. He explains that these runs attracted the attention of others, causing them to become increasingly congested. El Salvador, their city, has a high crime rate, but it has recently been safer.
We, as “ordinary people,” do not need to wait for someone with immense authority to come and save us. We can start our own social movements to assist our society evolve and improve.

Gerardo Calderón | TEDxLehighU |
Social change needs engaged communities, not heroes

Youth Activism

The youthful generation has a significant impact on societal change. Especially as a campaigner. Being human on this earth, I feel, means contributing, creating, or changing something, or at least attempting to do so. Adults frequently claim that they labor for us in order to provide us with a better life. But who’s to say we can’t work for our own future as well? We, the younger generation, have the ability to shape a world and a society that meets our demands.

We may not know it, but the younger generation has had a significant impact on societal ideas. As the years pass, we see that every young person who speaks up about what he or she thinks and supports becomes more vocal. We can now see and be inspired by these kinds of occurrences thanks to social media. We link individuals every day on social media, especially our peers. We observe their views, attitudes, and ideas and may relate to them in some way. We saw things that we had no idea existed, and we saw things that we had no idea existed. People have revealed the realities about violence against women, LGBTI rights, cruelty against children, animals, racism, and other issues on social media in recent years.

We see these incidents virtually every day, implying that there are several changes that need to be made in our society. However, the most significant thing is that the younger generation recognizes that it is because of social media that they have learned the realities about these issues. I feel that peer-to-peer communication and understanding are most successful. That is when we start to consider what we can do to improve our society and urge people to do better.

Today, I’m going to post a video of Sam Stevens’ TEDx presentation, titled “Moving Youth Towards Action and Activism.” He began his address in this video by categorizing the young generation into three groups: consumers, activists, and educators. Because of the comparisons he provided, I was able to see the similarities between his nation and mine. Because individuals and our challenges are universal, action is universal. We noticed that our society’s purchasing power is dominated by young people, especially during the epidemic. Because young people spend the majority of their time on social media, businesses began to shift and invest in social media marketing. As a youthful generation, we are in charge of marketing and company strategy about what they will make and how they will sell it.

The video mentioned in the article

As I previously stated, becoming an activist has become simpler thanks to social media. Teenagers began to be heard and grew more interested. As an educator, he stressed the need for young people to become involved in “adult concerns” so that their peers may perceive such challenges as their own, rather than something they will sort out later in life. Especially when it comes to major topics such as global warming or gun violence, for example.

Ornament and Crime

Adolf Loos was born in 10 December 1870.He is an Austrian architect,designer and teorists of modern architecture of the late 19th century. He studied at the Royal and Imperial State Technical College but he left the school for serve in the army for two years.After that in order to get the lesson he wants he studied Dresden University of Technologhy but he did not graduated from the school. Adolf Loos is well known for his leading style of 20th-century modern architecture. In the late 1890s, when Art Nouveau was at its peak, Adolf Loos began his practice in architecture but Loos was not affected by the popular Art Nouveau at all. His famous manifesto; “Ornament and Crime” was clearly shown his thought against the conventional architectural wisdom of the 19th century. He wrote Ormament and Crime in 1908.His approach to modernst ideas are quite different for insance,he things that ornament is not neccessary even a crime.Like if we want to eat a gingerbread than we should not  spend a effort to eat in a shape  heart or a rider which is covered by ornament but it need to be smooth. Adolf Loos introduced a sense of the ‘immorality’ of ornament, describing it as ‘degenerate’.So that the writer’s opinions are supported very clear.The writer says that human health is related to ornament.According to Loon, mankind is healthier than ever, only a few people are sick.But these few tyrannize over the worker who is so healthy that he cannot invent ornament.Finally the writer just tolarate ornaments on human’s body.For writer, ornaments are not necessary on other things. To conclude, Loos proposed a strict functionalism, which in turn derived from the rationalism of Otto Wagner and from the theories of the great German architect Gottfred Semper. At the same time Loos also retained the respect for ancient architecture; which expressed in the regular use of classical architectural elements in his architectural designs. His writings and architectural works provided great inspiration to the architects of the following generation. Adolf Loos is questioning why we spend effort and money for unnecessary things.For him we should focus on the utility not the ornaments however,for me sometimes ornaments are helping us to show our creativity  or the way we represent our selves so in some cases ornament should not be crime.

TEDUARCH Studios Handbook

TEDU Faculty of Architecture simply loves its studios and we are full heartedly
inviting our students to share our passion and pride for them. The word “studio” generally defines a place for study, usually in relation to artists’, musicians’, architects’ or designers’ work.  the Studio is the place for students’ studies, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The Studio is a public academic space where students share, blend and discuss their educational and personal experiences. It is a melting pot of formal and informal practices of learning. In studios sleepless nights are not that inevitable. You can have a healty life with a good planning. The moment you step in the Studio you become a designer, and everything you learn, in and outside the Studio, will have to be put into action just now; not after you graduate.  Design Studios are based on making, doing, and producing. In the Studio we do not learn and then do; but we learn by doing.  Studio courses present is the most important resource required for education, with all the research, experimentation, trials and mistakes included. One of the most basic things about design is that there is no single correct answer or best solution for any given design problem. The role of the studio instructor is to provide the students with the means to develop their individual design approaches within a consistent, communicable, justifiable, and improvable methodology; and definitely not to lead them towards the instructor’s own individual approach. Multitude and diversity of perspectives and opinions are required from the part of the instructors as much as it is from students. The form and process of assigning change from year to year thanks to assignments. Each assignment, whether it is a whole architectural/design project in a later year or a well-defined stage of a first year project, comes with basic learning objectives. You are supposed to learn from the process of doing what the assignment asks and should be focused on the process, not on the shortest and easiest way to a “successful” result. Seeking knowledge and inspiration in other people’s work is an inseparable part of any creative action. Aiming originality for originality’s sake is one of the most common beginner’s mistakes in the studios. Always remember that teaching yourself the methodology of design research is far more important than coming up with a unique idea, especially in the first years. Tools like drawings, sketches, diagrams and models are instruments with which designers research into design ideas and transform them into design decisions. Your active interest and intellectual effort will be required. Doing, failing and learning from your failure is much a better education than not doing anything until you convince yourself that you have a fail-proof idea, in the Studio.