AN AUTONOMOUS THRESHOLD: URBAN HETEROTOPIA

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AN AUTONOMOUS THRESHOLD: URBAN HETEROTOPIA
BArch Graduation Project
Archiprix International The Best Graduation Projects Selection 2019

This is an imagination of a multi-purpose space in Basmane, Izmir, designed to promote multicultural exchange and social relationships that transcend cultural barriers. The space aims to address social exclusions and otherization prevalent in the diverse neighborhood by bringing together people from Southeast Turkey who migrated in 1990s and those escaping from the war in Syria. The project proposes a community-based approach with a magazine published, a guide that invites people to participate in events, and shared spaces for laundry and public bathroom. The space will host dance and music performances and culinary events, promoting cultural exchange. The project draws inspiration from the existing dynamics of Basmane, being an autonomous zone that challenges the norms of urban space with its slit openings into the normalized social space of the city—a heterotopic space. It is one of those “other spaces” Michel Foucault talks about in his enigmatic essay “Of Other Spaces.” Foucault suggests that a heterotopia always represents society yet distorts it in such a way that it reveals a culture’s ideology. Heterotopias form autonomous zones challenging the presumed norms of urban space. The project is situated within the urban area of Basmane as a collaborator, rather than a project made by an architect. It is proposing a framework that engages with social, political, and physical issues, creating a temporary structure that aims to have a permanent effect in the long term.

The spatial layers of the space suggest the potential for another life/space that is possible, and the aim is to imagine a constantly evolving space that constantly in- becoming, rather than an imagining them as a fixed uneventful entity.