Trash Peaks and Debris, Tales of Architecture in its (Un)becoming. 18 September – 20 October 2024 Salt Galata, Workshop IV

This exhibition tells trash tales, probing the position of architecture and the notion of its practice, regarding two sites – İzmir Harmandalı Landfill and İzmit Gulf reclamation area, studied at the 3rd year undergraduate and diploma studio, ITU Department of Architecture, 2023-24 Fall term.

These studios explore the ubiquitous waste and trash, the wasted and overlooked. And, this architecture narrative is truly kafkaesque; it has the top qualities of pristine architecture yet it witnesses its experience of a struggle for gradual (un)becoming. It is an attempt among the heaps of trash, excessive gestures of consumption, piles of debris, and pollution of the guilty afterthought. In our current condition, defined as the thick present by Donna Haraway, these architectural experiments manifest creative resilience and pose unexpected questions for architectural practices.  And, these experiments emancipate a future where unbecoming, deterioration, and ephemeral are the keys to the resilience of this thick present.

The exhibition delineates the narratives of architecture in its struggle of (un)becoming in various scales; trash terrariums, micro narratives, the ambiguous vantage point of the anthropocenic observer, with an aim for curious speculation.

Exhibition Team: Assoc. Prof. Bihter Almaç (Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Architecture, Department of Architecture), Asude Erdoğmuş, Ayşe Hümeyra Yeşilyurt, Beyza Bahşi, Fulya Aras, Gülce Çobankara, Mehmet Sait Aktay, Melda Uyar, Mert Kaan Alptekin, Özlem Sıla Demir, Serra Türkoğlu, Tarık Kurt, Yağız Özel, Yiğit Yolcu

Exhibition sponsors: ITU Development Foundation, Kale, TetraPak