Maltepe University Faculty of Architecture and Design is pleased to announce its international undergraduate workshop.
muiscarch’17: Designing with(in) İstanbul. 

Muiscarch’17 will be held in 3-5 May, in Maltepe University Faculty of Architecture and Design, İstanbul. We accept applications until 20 April, 2017. Also participants only have to pay their travel expenses. All other expenses will be provided by university.

For apply: please send your CV and motivation paragraph to: 
[email protected]














In comparison to the European continent of Istanbul, the Asian continent has generated its urban existence and representation relatively late. “Space and Trace” focuses on the Asian continent’s last two centuries that are important in terms of urban generation and transformation. The aim is to scrutinize the urban identity and buildings that have been wound up in a cycle of existence/destruction since the late 19th century in Kadıköy.


The workshop will start with a half day site trip in the area of Haydarpaşa-Yeldeğirmeni-Ayrılık Çeşmesi. Haydarpaşa district (the railway, old railway buildings, and the port area) will be observed under special permission and guidance from the TCDD (Turkish State Railways). Later, Yeldeğirmeni-Ayrılık Çeşmesi will be explored with the guidance of TAK (Design Atelier Kadıköy). During the trip, participants are expected to observe, experience and imagine the ruined and destroyed artefacts as well as the historical ones. Each trace, having a distinct sign, is sought for exploring the multilayered and mutual relations between different urban actions: construction, dissolution, destruction, replacement.

On the second day of the workshop, experiences/observations will be transformed into hybrid thinking processes -on micro and macro scales- through a cross reading with historical texts. The main goal is to explore new modes of understanding and representation offered by the dualities of “visual information-written information” and “experiencing-history reading”.



Space, is a tool designed by the human mind and it maintains the communication between two subjects. The subject who creates the space reflects its own historical past, socio-cultural and socio-economic status and technological accumulation into the space. On the other hand, the subject perceives the space by deconstructing it and with their own accumulation; and assigns a meaning to it. Istanbul is a city, which is re-produced every day. In this sense, the Bosphorus and the marine vessels that separate and link the city as two continents play an important role in this reproduction. Every marine vessel on the Bosphorus is a reflection of Istanbul within various and specific contexts.

In this workshop, the marine spaces on the Bosphorus will be investigated in terms of their inherent relations between design and perception. The workshop will start with a half day boat trip on the Bosphorus and will continue with a full-day workshop in our department’s workplace “Hangar (Shed)”. The workshop will focus on the vessel typology in order to examine the contexts in which these vessels reflect İstanbul’s socio-cultural and socio-economic characteristics. During the morning session,  the participants will reflect on and represent verbal and visual experiences about the marine vessels that were examined. In the afternoon session,the findings will be shared, discussed and presented as posters. 




The city is a dynamic structure that is changed, transformed and reproduced through the complex relations formed by its multiple actors and between their surroundings. The relationships we form with the cities are shaped by our individual experiences. In addition, they are defined by concepts such as memory, identity and history while also being organized by technology, transportation and defined routes. How is the urban experience affected by individual perception and ways of using the city? How could we diversify and represent this experience? Could ways of representation add a different approach to our perception of the city?

The purpose of this workshop is to analyze and represent the continuity, complexity and contradiction in the city while answering the above questions. After a field trip made as the whole workshop group, the participants are expected to analyze and represent their personal experience through a medium of their choice. By this means, the productions are encouraged to be constructed via various approaches such as collage, drawing, video, soundscape, photograph as well as an arrangement/sequence of objects. The rest of the workshop will be a group discussion on the potentials of different approaches to the same fragment of the city and how they could be utilized as part of the concept of urban experience. The main aim is to challenge, deviate and thus diversify the normative ways of perceiving the city by translating its experience into ‘something’ legible.