Power Free Prison
March, 2009
Onur Can Tepe
The proposal for the “Prisoned” competiton has a different design process and final product among the others. The participants of the competitions were challenged to create an architectural expression of their personal philosophy on what imprisonment is or should be. Through their design process, they were asked to consider how prisons are used by societies, and what their affect is on those societies, as well as their caretakers and occupants. (Socio Design Foundation)
Thinking about the prisons, “The Birth of the Prisons” which was written by Michel Foucault who is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, has been the pionner for the main approach. According to Foucault “Prison is a culture, a form of power. It is a managemental activitiy, and management forms itself phsically on order and discipline. Management reproduces and reinforces power, so that it can be seen on everyday theatres like schools, hospitals, military… Prison is a stricter military, an intolerant school. That’s why their plan schemes are so similar. They all are the symptoms of power. Prisons are sustaining a practise on inmates, which was started somewhere else. The society views this practise on every individual by countless discipline mechanisms.”
Projection of this social meaning and role of prisons on the pysical space is analytical organization of volumes, a centralized plan. Power puts the space to an order, isolates the sub-units from each other, defines borders and frames levels. This is the architecture of control, discipline and order.
I tried to use architecture as an objection, some kind of protest like a piece of art in a “Lebbeus Wood Style”. Even if architecture is not adequate to change the world, it can be a tool to understand the world and maybe to express yourself.
Since prison is a managemental activitiy in order to rule the inmates by “normals”, the managers has to be replaced by inmates themselves regardless any hierarchy. Controling the inmates render them passive and angry against the law-makers and society. This change on the organization provokes a change on the physical space just like the old system has been doing for years. The space is digitalized by deconstructing the existing space organization scheme.
This project can be seem like a parody or an expression in an unusual manner. Tectonic elements are used as tools but the question is “Does this proposal has architectural qualities?”
I know it is too assertive but I believe it is just about space and its anthropologic extent.
Story of a city: the Bazaar
January 2009
Onur Can Tepe
I shoot this short movie for an international competition organized by SMIBE. The theme was to produce an engaging and entertaining moving image story that illustrates the theme of “Story About a Place.”
The movie came up with the Himmelblau’s extraordinary text about the concept of city: “Architecture of Clouds” In the movie, the bazaar is a metaphor for the city and vice versa.
the city is an irrational organism…
the city is a matrix of diverging impossibilities.
chaos… and diversity.
the coincidende of anti-logic and anti-authority systems
creates the city and its complexity
city creates contradictions, and contradictions create the city.
and the city constantly regenerates itself everyday.
everyday is a new story for the city…
every single day, it comes to life,
raises,
and dies…
Zeitgeist
Modernist mimarlık kurgusunun iki asli öğesi; taşıyıcılar ve duvarlar arasındaki fark derinleştirilerek, bu iki öğe birbirinden kopartılıp başkalaştırılarak ve başkalaşma sonucu duvar öğesi bambaşka bir bağlama sokularak yeni bir mekan deneyimi yaratmak hedeflenmiştir.October, 2008
Project Team: Onur Can Tepe, Huseyin Penbeoglu, Serdar Bedir
The theme of the national design competition, which is organized by an aluminium company Çuhadaroğlu, was to design a wharf to be used by museums along the Golden Horn, Istanbul with the well use of material aluminium. This project is eliminated on the final round.
Our response to the design problem is built on metaphysical query of architechnotic components.
The difference between two fundamental components of modernist architecture: “bearing” and “non-structual wall” is deepened through plucking and altering, as a result of it “wall” is put into a different context which can provoke a different space experiment.
The space lives upon the idea of activating the passive user. “Time” takes place in the setting of the space and transforms “the concept of wall”. Wharf embodies the whole query.
The space will breathe and change like an organism as long as it fulfills its function of housing the traffic between sea and museum. When people use the space, they will write or draw “things” on the aluminium triangle prisms, connect them by the juints with each other. The more people “express” themselves, the more walls move, in other words, museum diary which transformed to a physical space will be written and generate new vistas to its users and urbans.
The space becomes a construction site of zeitgeist.
Users can frame the view they like, make their own touch on the space, give the meaning, build their sign.
Aluminium modules are light, can easily be constructed, joint and extracted. Drawing and erasing is easy on them.
InfoBank
Project Team: Onur Can Tepe, Huseyin Penbeoglu, Serdar Bedir
2008 May
This project was for the contest ”Share a new vision: Redesign the bank branch of the future” in which entrants were asked to design new spaces and new activities for the bank branch of the future. We have won the second prize among the 270 entries from 38 countries and a special mention: “New spaces in the branch”.
Design process was lead by serious researches and case studies about the concepts of “Bank” and “Branch”. The first and probably most important assignment would be to deliver an answer on the question “Why and how branching will continue its existence in the future?”
In the nineties with the arising of the e-banking concept, the growth of ATM usage and tele-banking, the end of branching history in 2000s was predicted. However this prognosis proved itself to be wrong, as the upcoming new service-channels in the 2000′s have not been able to increase the number of customers ONLY making use of these channels for more then a monthly 7 percent according to a study made by TowerGroup in 2007. Within the process of change, the prognosis stated for the 2000′s will derive when consumers exist of people born after the ITrevolution.
If we want to sustain physical branches in the future, branching needs a changed definition. What is banking? Banks are financial institutions which are not only revenue targeted, but also public serving. What is branching? A branch is a stop where consumers make use of financial services with personal interaction, and where they can receive information about things such as mortgage solutions and pin code changes. These answers guided us to decide our main concept. Information centers where customers will be able to gain many kinds of information while they are receiving financial services.
Generally, the main approach about the design was focused on defining new activites in the branch and solving existing problems simultenously, while framing the “systems” in terms of how they interact with each other.
Our branches are places where if desired, customers can do their jobs quickly or where they can get face-to-face service in an environment full of information, places where staff is not bored, not standing at one point during the day, working in a secure and flowing environment.
They are the cities’ new information points. Trustful institutes with the broad support they provide.
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