“PLACE/SPACE” AND “MEMORY” FORM THE TITLE AND CONTENT OF THE EXHIBITION, AND MARK A BEGINNING, IN THE NEW SPACE.
In 2014 Turkey acquired a permanent space at the biennale for the next 20 years, Places of Memory, curated by Murat Tabanlıoglu, has been the first exhibition of the national pavilion, so we had the chance to express our architectural and urban approach at the Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition. The concepts “place/space” and “memory”, that form both the title and content of the first International Architecture Exhibition mark, in a sense, a beginning, as the first step taken in this new space. Designing the exhibition space and the context of the first Pavilion of Turkey at the Venice Biennale 14th International Architecture Exhibition, as in architectural production, our preferred method had been to approach the project as a natural process that develops with contributions, although it began to take shape from the first sketches on, and through consideration of all data we had gathered. Following the assessment, we invited five architect/artists. Along with the governing idea of “architecture, not architects”, specifically underlined within 2014’s general theme, we kept in step with the guidelines of the exhibition via individual perception, narration and remembering, and we sought to coincide our viewpoints with different views. In fact, we prioritized the establishment of a platform in which contributors to the exhibition formed the inner circle, yet in addition to that, intended to bring together everyone’s memories and documents, as architecture is not only an aesthetic stratum, it has its place, and evolves within the structure of life.
