Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN ARCHITECTURE/THE PANDEMIC AND THE CITY, YILDIZ AKSOY, Editör, DAKAM, İstanbul, ss.203-218, 2020
The current pandemic first froze and then rapidly transformed the flow of life globally. The disruption of
the spatial construct that organizes physical encounters in education as well as in economic and social life
led to a digital meeting space environment. This fast transformation required to question the design
problems and their functions introduced in education. In architectural project studios, where interaction
and communication are very important, it initially led to a panic in the construction of digital meetings, but
then allowed the development of new perspectives in design problems and novel means of expression.
Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Department of Architecture started the semester with the theme "A
Backwards Discussion on Competition" in the Habitat project studio. The concept of a backwards discussion
on competition aimed to analyze of the process and results of the "Olivelo Izmir Suburban Ecological
Common Habitat Project Competition" and to reconstruct the design problem based on the data, and to
provide solutions. The semester that started with this content and its narrative tools was frozen for a short
time due to the pandemic and required a rapid decision on how to proceed. The "Backwards Discussion on
Competition" construct was transformed into"If the Olivelo competition was announced after the pandemic,
what would be the competition set up and how the discussions would be conducted?" Considering the
competition from a post-pandemic perspective, an attempt was made to define the process backwards. In
this process, it became necessary to question the current and future state of affairs within the 4 walls that
surround us and to understand the new world order, and to prepare ourselves for the future. During the
pandemic, the youth, who rapidly returned to their hometowns, experienced a novel fear for the protection
from the disease and survival of their families. The students claimed that online meetings and design
discussions alleviated the anxiety in their lives, and they could spend good effort on their designs. In this
process, our duty and responsibility as educators was to provide young adults the opportunity to develop
and realize their ideas, to help them improve means of expression and to adapt ourselves to this new life
without panic. In this new process, predictions about the future, the novel social, socio-economic and
physical environment, and the reasons for this change and transformation were discussed as a design
problem. The students were asked to design the changes and transformations in Yelki Campus", which was
the venue of the competition, as the final product. In this process, students improved their digital
expression means, and presented their design constructs with images, 3-dimensional visuals, sketches and
5-minute short movies. The discussion on the future led them to question both themselves and their world
and prepare themselves psychologically and sociologically for the new future.
Keywords: Olivelo, backwards discussion of the competition, Habitat design studio, ESOGU Architecture
Department.