2016–2017 

‘Recovery Urbanism’: Regenerating the War-Torn City

Acted upon the very complex socio-cultural antagonisms in the Middle East, the current political condition signifies an old concept realising through new means: urban warfare. In the 2016-2017 academic term, METU Master of Urban Design Studio took the problematic issue of urban warfare into consideration strategically from a design point of view. In the first semester, a series of typological models of strategic urban interventions were suggested for the regeneration of the post-war-torn urban fabric in Suriçi. The design research projects on the site involved the major issues, designing the new, preserving the old, and relating them within a unified context and morphology. In the second semester, the design teams tended to improve this morphological perspective with social programs under the main project title of ‘developing socio-spatial perspectives by design’. At that stage, each group was asked to come up with a series of alternative scenarios on the socio-spatial transformation of the site. All the design explorations have been pursued based on a specific concept and around a certain theme derived from the preliminary theoretical researches during the seminars.

Studio instructors: Adnan Barlas, Müge Akkar Ercan, Olgu Çalışkan, Cansu Canaran

Students:

Maheen  Abbasi, Berçem Kaya, Özgü Apaydin, Ecem Kutlay, Didem Türk, Esin Duygu Döner, Selen Karadoğan, Hande Gürsan, Esra Aydin, Çağrim Koçer, Sabrina Shurdhi, Fatma Nacize Gözel, Fethiye Arslantaş, Mert Akay, Duygu Kalkanli, Ali Emre Karabacak, Rüya Erkan, Pelin Terlan Ertürk