Arredamento Magazine, 2018
Alper Derinboğaz, Msc. Architect; Salon

Architecture within Performance Platform

Dilek Öztürk and Şebnem Yalınay Çinici, discuss the interpretation of architecture through social and positive sciences and representation of it on an art platform by focusing on Alper Derinboğaz’s ”Space Graph” exhibition that was organised in Versus Art Project as a parallel event to 4^th Istanbul Design Biennale.

Dilek Öztürk

Chronos, the God of Time in Ancient Greece, ruled the universe well before Zeus. The God of Time who swallowed all his children out of a fear of his throne, was released after years of imprisonment by Rhea’s son, Zeus, and dominated the island of the holy deads.

Time swallowing the threats, being captivated and then dominating the end; can be examined within the potential of contemporary creative practices to interpret the realities of today’s world. Our confrontation with time, it is important to use the side effects of time for these comments. So; process, memory, motion, moment, speed and repetition. We add various variables on these agents of time to understand and express today’s life. Each time we add variables, they convert the time we perceive.

Although the time carries us in its own flow, it exists independently of us. On the one hand, it becomes a personal experience with multiple possibilities of existence. In the current design discussion, this can be translated as experience design; it brings together the agents of the time and designs subjective realities that cannot exist at the same time and place again. The experiences of being and creating are redesigned on the different axis of time.

Modern psychology defines time as a form of our intuition. Time is a concept that we cannot comprehend, but we have no doubt about its existence. As Etienne Klein describes, it’s something that everybody talks about, but nobody can see and touch.

We can turn to Chronos and ask: Is time ahead of the universe we live in? What are the missions of transforming the flow of time, rather than flowing within the time?

For the transmission of architectural practice that is busy with being timelessness that tries to resist time; we are in search of the creation and contribution to the grounds that open the discussion of practicing architecture today and in the future.

Alper Derinboğaz opened a discussion by his “Space Graph” exhibition that took place in Versus Art Project’s space between 19 September-13 October 2018 as a parallel exhibition of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial. He presents the capacity of architecture as an experimental area that transforms personal expressions by means of different dimensions of sciences and other disciplines.

The exposition of architectural practice on the art gallery gives us an opportunity to read the diversification of today’s creative production. “Space Graph” examines the design of a new architecture and thinking style by evaluating studio’s documentation within the context of time-space integrity through the relations between human – nature and artificial intelligence.

Opening and sharing the processes of research, design and production is very important to understand today’s architectural production. In this context, the exhibition of architecture takes the concept of time from its linear plane and transforms it into a transparent laboratory space. It becomes a means of transporting time to space.

We observe many different formats of work in the name of “opening the studio” in architectural practices. Rem Koolhaas says that S, M, L, XL actually revealed links, and in this context, he preferred to stay at the background and explore the audience. This book, which is the output of a 20-year production process, was a source that reflected the architecture of a market economy that triggered globalization. Setting out to comprehend the office topography, OMA could not go beyond the production of in catalogue of things. Beyond “Internet of Things” we can define today’s world as “Internet of Everything”; we should be able to talk about the ways of interpreting contemporary architecture within the framework of the reality in which man produces superior technology than human beings.

In the “Space Graph” exhibition; we have observed a holistic and continuous texture on the concretization and even being sculptured of the process through different media. This continuity can be observed in previous works of the architect who focuses on the future life and alternative ways of architectural production and the translation of the lightness level into architecture by means of digital technologies. This process is shaped around Derinbogaz’s attempt to create value in the architectural debate of today and the future.

In the landscape of exhibiting architecture; changing and defeating the character of architectural representation defines one of the important approaches today: “Disruptive thinking”, meaning destructive constructivism.

In the last century, the expression “building constructed by its architect” was used. The work was described through the architect who had built it, and it was thus conveyed to the language. I believe that this transfer has a high potential to be transformed disruptively into a concept of “new architecture / work constructing the architect” with exhibitions and different landscapes of representation.

While I am trying to describe today’s architectural production, I have an article in front of me, titled “Call for Ideas: Marschitect 2018 Architecture Competition ” and I think it would be healthier for all of us to leave the end of this recipe open.

I think that our reason for thinking of Mars is that we continue to exist as a species that has the most manipulative effect on the planet Earth. In this age, which we called anthropocene, we caused significant changes in global geology. In this context, we are manipulating the agents of the time – that means, the memory. This manipulation encourages us to reconsider the concepts of space and time in the universe in which we live.

Derinbogaz, which examines architecture within the framework of time-space integrity as the positive sciences address the world, also holds the memory of a possible future. The exhibition brings a criticism to the Anthropocene epoch, through its ability to produce the spaces of alive and artificial nature. The industrial robotic arm in the exhibition symbolizes an industrial product assuming that its superior to man.

The orbit-forming mechanism of this arm is transformed into a performance that exhibits more than one existence through dialogues it establishes when faced with human beings. The art ground that this performance represents is a catalyst that connects us to both the universe and the nature, triggering human interaction. A liberating ground. It’s a field of experiment that focuses on personality but is fed through collective memory.

Space Graph: Architecture, Non-Represented and Another Knowledge Zone

Şebnem Yalınay Çinici

“Space Graph” exhibition of Alper Derinbogaz in Versus Art Project continues to make us think about architecture in a few points: First, the design-space relationship of architecture in developing representation environments by means of technological possibilities; secondly, how the  non-easy to represent and fluid can be rephrased in these technologically-empowered environments; third, design-production interconnection that emerged in the relationship of architecture with technology; and, finally the differentiating area of information released through research made by design and production.

In the 20th century, representation environments have been an important area of enforcement as the first publicity of ideas about space and architecture. Situationism movement, where architectural representation is as important as its tectonic and physical existence took place in the literature with Constant Niewenhuys’s “New Babylon” project, which was revealed only by models and drawings produced between 1959-1974. The original ideas and qualities of architectural and spatial possibilities may also occur in the environments of representation; in this context, “New Babylon” made it clear that spatial ideas put forward through these environments are definitely architecture.

Therefore, recalling the “New Babylon” in relation to the “Space Graph” exhibition can be meaningful in this respect: an experiment to sustain the idea of space with the capacity of transforming itself according to the wishes and needs of users just as in “New Babylon”.

The work in the exhibition follows the traces of the movement of a robot arm according to a defined algorithm and presents the projection of the movement as a different time-space possibility. Alper Derinboğaz’s “Passage” study with Refik Anadol gives us the opportunity to visually experience the time / space continuity and interconnectivity by means of VR glasses. On the other hand, “Plates” presents the design object as plates in the form of physical products of a multi-transformable environment. It is likely to consider the exhibition as a field of technological experience area in which one able to visualize and produce variable spatial possibilities that cannot be explained in its single form but that can be perceived in its own fluidity in many ways.

As we continue to think through such a field of experimentation and experience in architectural design in relation to high-end technologies, an area of discussion on differentiated information through the field of design-based research reveals itself. At this point, I think, the questions we have come up with are: how, in the present day, when technological opportunities are intensified, research practices through design and production provide different spatial possibilities for architecture? Does spatial research within this medium run the risk of creating its own closed world? How can the channels for the results that will directly affect our lives be explored when investigating the other possibilities of architecture?

Being able to continue asking these is one of the strongest motivations of “Space Graph” while targeting similar questions silently.