Local conditions along the New Silk Road are often largely impacted by the global ones operating in their area—one of such being the Republic of Panama, ever since the build of the Panama Canal. The canal offered a shortcut and connected the World over water, but paradoxically introduced divisions in other directions, it divided continents, the country, and ecosystems, ... This project explores the dual and opposing nature of connecting elements. The dichotomy in the meaning they hold is ascribed to the ever-changing factors, narratives, directions, and perspectives towards them, while the elements themselves persist as the only constant, as a reference. Despite being perceived as linear, once approached carefully, thresholds become spaces, spaces consisting of all the areas they divide. Cinta Costera 3 viaduct surrounds the two impoverished neighborhoods and the old core of Panama City: Casco Viejo, while offering connection to the residential and work areas for the wealthy. This connecting element simultaneously divides Casco Viejo from the wealthy areas and from the ocean. A seemingly linear border, a threshold to pass in order to reach the open ocean. The design aim is to dissolve the city into a beach. The intertidal landscape between the city and the threshold becomes a beach and becomes the end-goal itself. The city is reaching out to pass the threshold and achieve freedom=bathing. In this attempt, it encounters zones, thresholds, connections, and divisions, and experiences the revealed sensations of bathing, and spending time in and around water, and by the time the threshold is traversed, the aim was already experienced within.

This research focuses on the transformation of the Groningen gas field region, which has transitioned from a symbol of national pride due to its vast natural gas reserves to a region grappling with the significant impacts of gas extraction. With the permanent closure of gas production, the region faces ongoing challenges such as land subsidence, earthquakes, and socio-economic shifts. This study aims to explore sustainable and commemorative landscape-based transformation strategies to address these issues and redefine the identity of Groningen.

The research identifies two primary areas of concern: the existing gas extraction sites and the broader landscape affected by environmental changes and social disruptions. By analyzing the current state and potential of these sites, the study proposes design interventions that integrate industrial heritage into public spaces and enhance regional resilience.

Three representative sites—Slochteren, Ten Post, and Noordbroek—are selected as case studies. Slochteren, the first gas extraction site, is considered for its potential to become an open-air museum, akin to the Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park in Germany. Ten Post, located in the most seismically active and subsidence-prone area, and Noordbroek, one of the first sites undergoing cleanup, offer insights into how design can mitigate environmental impacts and foster a sense of place.

The theoretical framework incorporates principles of landscape architecture, the concept of guilty landscapes, and post-industrial landscape transformation. These theories provide a systematic approach to understanding and addressing the multifaceted issues associated with the Groningen gas field. The goal is to create a cohesive strategy that connects these sites to their surrounding landscapes and communities, turning them into meaningful public spaces that reflect the region's history and identity while promoting sustainability and resilience.

This research contributes to the broader discourse on post-industrial landscape transformation by demonstrating how integrated design approaches can address environmental, social, and historical challenges. The findings aim to offer a replicable model for other regions facing similar transitions from industrial heritage to sustainable future landscapes.

This project experiments in representing the spatial complexity of a research area and reintroduces it to an adjacent site in the language of architecture. A heavy industrial district for ship building and maintenance is centered on and taken as a field with its dense configuration of artifacts (cranes, workshops, cargoes) and invisible force activated by movement of these objects. For a group of people – workers who work and live inside everyday in positions of insecure employment, safety and long work hours, a collective place is proposed for leisure and cultural activities.

René Char's aphorism 'They installed us heirs without a will' as a cause for reflection locates the inability of the man of the 21st century to perceive what the past of the place has left behind. In general, it demonstrates the failure of our instant culture to understand the meaning of urban heritage and the dismissal of a consciousness of the past. This consciousness and its identification within the space of ruins is a prevalent theme in architecture ever since renaissance, and today it’s becoming even more pressing especially in the light of cultural provision along the New Silk Road. In the case of Istanbul, and more specifically the port of Haydarpaşa, this space is under scrutiny since the system of values that governs it is shifting drastically. Among ancient ruins and neglected industrial heritage, the city fluctuates through a process of change, in a constant state of in-between, struggling to tolerate the unresolved borders of different social, cultural, and historical layers, all of which are interwoven within the same urban narrative. How can we use architecture as a medium to bridge the gaps between the different layers of cultural and historical importance that contrast and intersect within the urban fabric? How to enable a ruin space pivotal to Istanbul’s modern and ancient history in order to become part of the landscape of a new coastal development that has been closed off to the city for decades? The design proposal aims to the prospective revisiting of the ruin space as a field of interpretation, revision and reconstruction that is reflective instead of restorative towards the potential future. It suggests a place existing so above as below the current site that reflects the contradictory forces of its very creation, the underground archeology of antiquity and the overground industrial heritage. The design phase includes the activation of the programmatic potentials informed by the intermediate (in-between) spaces identified within the site and reflects the meeting of different eras that happens on the ground level, the ‘in between’ space of the investigation.

According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, the notion of “space” can be read in several ways, of what is the five general understandings of it would be: outside earth’s atmosphere, empty area, period, freedom, and lastly, where things exist/move. With the speed, amount of information, and technology we are currently facing in the 21st century., it is no surprise that the idea of “space” is often correlated with the “space race,” “space tech,” even in the realm of architecture1. Given its vast and generic nature, it is essential, especially for this architectural research paper, to make a clear position on “space” or, to be more specific, something “spatial.” Architecture is indeed something of “spatial,” introduced by E. Moursund that a form of “spatial expression” that develops opportunities for humans to navigate, measure, anticipate, project, and construct perceptions; dictated by what architectural practitioner so-called “the language of space,” which consisted numerous spatial manipulative method and tool that help to shape our physical environment (Kasparowitz, 2017). Some great examples of “method” could be Architectural theory, education, or personal experience; as vague as it seems in comparison to “tools,” it could be almost anything creative and inspiring (or the other way); “tool” is more of a tangible object in our daily life that prevents or encourages a type of human behaviour, and as simple as it seems, some of the notable examples would be your bathroom door, living room windows, or partition walls that separate different functions; to demonstrate our knowledge and skill in both the “method” and “tool,” we draw, and to realize. Therefore, we build. The charm, speed, and impact of our panoptical creations encourage our egotistical profession to think that “space” stops where the site boundary of the plot of land ends. Fortunately (also, unfortunately), the domain of “space” does not end here; it also exists in what our optic and haptic sensibility cannot perceive; it is something else and, indeed, something more.
A truly cross-dimensional [Physical] research that explores and recognizes “space” that exists in another realm outside architecture. This realm of “space” and “spatial” would be the starting point of this research, asking the generic yet essential question of how people perceive the notion of “space”? Meanwhile, with the ambitious attempt to answer it by investigating the elements that compose “space” and something “spatial.” Next, the topic of “sensation” would also be discussed as a reaction and first tier of consequences generated by the composition of “space.” The third chapter of this research is the “Power of Architecture”; it could be seen as an attempt to show the inevitable influential power of our physical space and environment while simultaneously demonstrating the limitation of its “space.” The departure point of this research could be seen as another attempt to seek a common understanding from the audience that to create what we so-called the ideal “space,” we must first understand, study, and consider “space” from other realms cause only then “space” can be as meaningful, as functional, and pragmatic like they are all first intended to be.

This project embarks on an alternative reality that is imagined to rethink our relationship with nature. If the representation of the climate crisis heavily relies on data that intrinsically does not entail a visual agency, it is also a crisis of representation. This project seeks to transcend the abstraction and complexity of the discourse revolving around the earth´s future by creating a narrative that grounds itself in the imaginary. Speculative fictions are experiments to think the consequences of emerging environmental and technological conditions. As such, the following pages offer a glimpse into a detailed scenario that does not attempt to clairvoyant the future, but contemplate and address urgent concerns in the way we care and design our planet.

The inhabitants of Assos live by ruins of temples, theatre and civic buildings inherent a humanistic value that transcends to present day. This is the hidden reality of many more cities on the Anatolian coast. This thesis proposes a system for
the revival of this unique type of ruin-city. The objective is to restore the organism of the city as a whole for its inhabitants and visitors. This is achieved by proposing a landscape intervention of a circular path reconnecting the inhabited village with the civic monuments to be restored. Along the path sites for new public buildings are proposed, laying the foundation for the expansion and rebirth of the city.

The research conducted at the beginning of the graduation year revolved around the indeterminate forces that shape the built environment, resulting in the formation of many ‘ephemeral’ cities along the new silk road. As such, the main outcomes from the research stage resided in the definition of the leftover spaces of intensive industrial exploitation: ‘dead’ landscapes are understood as the results – and eventual symptoms – of indeterminacy surrounding both the natural state of the site under study (an open-air coal mine), coupled with intensive anthropogenic exploitation of its resources. These dead landscapes dictate the conceptual approach adopted to deal with the territory both as a constructed industrial whole, in addition to many fragmented instances of indeterminacy.

The proposed graduation project takes inspiration from the Borders & Territories conceptual, practical, and theoretical frameworks as a base for research and design. The studio topic “Transient Liquidities along the New Silk Road” is heavily¬¬ in line with the proposed graduation topic, as it investigates conditions of formation of postindustrial landscapes in Turkey, a result of varying demands and rich natural resources along the new silk road. Turkey is then at the forefront of rapid transformations, made possible by its complex infrastructural landscape and abundance of natural resources.

The architectural design Associations and Assemblages-A Pattern-based
Housing Complex, are followed by research on existing housing patterns
in Istanbul. Three types of housing forms: Self-built, Street apartment and
Highrise. For individual housing units, they are different in scale/volume/facade
composition/land occupation. When grouped housing units land on the terrain
of Istanbul, they form different patterns in plan and elevation.The research
finding can be concluded as: By figure ground plan, self-built houses are more
dense in land occupation, but have less demolish on original topography than
street apartments and high-rises. The collision of three patterns in my site
Yenidoğan, the most over-populated area of Istanbul, guides me rethinking how
they can coexist in a more topo-friendly way and create possible new housing
patterns.

Moving from one zone to another it could alter dramatically in a remarkably short time. I have always wondered where the boundary of space, if any, and how is it delineated or created? Often invisible, yet it changes the way one experiences the atmosphere. Every day we cross numerous spatial boundaries, moving from one zone to another, subject to constant transition.

This research aims to identify and define the thresholds of atmosphere in a broader urban context on the example of Marseille and to explore the moments of thresholds of atmosphere and to experience the transition between them. There are two key components of the project: atmosphere which is very intuitive and its intangibility brings some level of complexity and the threshold that applies more rational logic into the research. This fascination was the entry point of my project in which I attempted to chase and grasp unseen qualities of atmosphere.

The attempt was made to read the city through certain aspects or moments
that can be experienced as thresholds between external and internal, visible and
invisible, tangible and intangible, psychical and psychological boundaries. The city of Marseille is further understood as a manifold that is continually reshaped by its inhabitants and with the thresholds of atmosphere playing a role as mediator between spaces. Consequently, the flow of the atmosphere
(and atmospheric thresholds) became the entry point of this research.

A maritime metropolis that acts as a gateway from which elements from all over the world can enter and mix, resulting in a repository of a large set of heterogeneous entities; Marseille is a knot of flows and fluxes intensifying and manifesting in an assemblage of entities that are products of continuous historical processes. It is a platform of Global trajectories that are resembled in local realities, a city of a hybrid character and a strong transitional status. A place of becomings and a field of latent potentiality and productive possibilities.
In Marseille, public spaces are the residue of rigid bordering processes conducted by different social constructs; Abolishing many possibilities for a new identity to emerge. However, rhizomatic threshold can be spotted on different scales. One that accommodates the co-presence of different parts. As observed, they are the spaces where multiple flows intersect. For example, the flows of people and commodities in the Noailles market.
What is still missing is the Medi-terrain that incorporates relations of exteriority between the components. Where within the encounters, interactions take place, capacities are employed and new properties emerge; A Spatio-temporal dynamic threshold -a field of intensities- where the exchange of commodities, information, and energy always happens: in other words, a place of the continuous act of territorialization, reterritorialization and deterritorialization.
The issue, therefore, is that well-determined, Fixed structures, control, and regulations in the urban space are not providing order anymore in the age of uncertainty and are not fostering the place for becoming (the presence of new possibilities). It is no longer efficient to solidify long-term urban plans, in the age of rapid change. The rigidity of the current urban environment made it very difficult to intervene and adapt to new needs and changing situations. That resulted in creating unpleasant in-conflict urban spaces. To transform the character of our modern urban environments, interventions should take into consideration the capacity of the public space to adapt to changeable conditions seeking more resilience and flexibility and allow for the physical manifestation of possibilities.

The end result is not a conventional architectural construct. it is also not a direct functional solution for a problem. The resulting intervention is a response to the contemporary urban condition and an attempt to create a plateau for dynamic network of dependency to encourage people to interact, catalyze the emergence of unplanned activities, inspire tolerance towards difference, and easily adapt to changing situations

Starting from a port, Marseille was born as the result of improvisation and spontaneous architectures rather than urban planning. Same things happened in the architecture scale. architects are not the only doers of architecture. Long after the building has been made the non-architects continuously do architecture. When non-architects occupy space, they start to ‘do-it-themselves’. In most cases, they do this in an already occupied territory, where the activity of doing architecture has been classified and claimed by architects - the rules have already been established. But there are also some space occupations that are out of the rules, such as squatting, vendors, graffiti, protest. They, like “pet architecture”, do not necessarily create appealing spaces, and some are even illegal, but they can highlight people’s demands and show people’s bottom-up determination to shape the city.

When people do the practice, they mainly based on their own current needs and what material they have instead of considering the building or city as a whole. These practices are spontaneous, unplanned makeshift and ad hoc. They can be seen as improvisational practice. Seen architecture as paintings, in these cases, their improvisational activities are more like a collage rather than fully considered composition. But as Jencks explains, it involves using an available system in a new way to solve a problem quickly and efficiently. By doing so, it offers a way for everyone to shape and discuss the city they live in. And for the public, there should be nothing preventing them, in an agonistic and participatory manner, from devising and debating forms of their shelter and space for daily life. The improvisational practice has itself taken inspiration: Another world is possible.

As a major transit city on the Mediterranean, Marseille’s urban history and landscape are largely defined by the continuous flows of matter and energy over time. Amongst these interwoven flows, the waste flow is one of the striking focal points. This is not only because the city of Marseille has historically struggled to escape its "dirty" reputation, but also because of its urban landscape today, which has been constantly reshaped by waste as a result of various natural and social events. In this project, the site of research is further targeted at the area near the estuary of the Huveaune River where waste and water flows densely intersect in the city. The idea of infrastructure as an intertwined system will facilitate alternative imaginations of Marseille's waste recycling facilities in order to re-project their social and ecological impact.

To every rise and fall of nations, crowds were vital. They could appear in the form of armies defending their motherlands or revolutionaries rewriting the courses of history, but they are also vital to political baiting beloved by every ‘big guy’. Crowds also bring in life to the masses; it is the various social spectacles that we (occasionally) attend to feel recharged and alive, connected by the warmth human relationship provides and the sense of belonging manifested therein. A politicised crowd likewise need not have a political agenda to address nor does it always entail a revolutionary goal; both dominance and resistance can too be accidental by-products of such accumulation. The question of crowding being truly democratic and its capacity to remain as a simple social event is, however, still open to debate.

To what extent can architecture embrace the transformative qualities of crowding and crowd flow?

I therefore aim to intervene at Porte d’Aix and return the life the various masses once embraced, ergo the title The Revolution of the Roundabout: The Arch as the Spectacle between Function and Deactivation. I intend to investigate the tension between endorsing and harnessing crowd formation on the one hand and crowd control on the other for I concluded that it is the focal dilemma of modern architecture and planning. It is in this propensity of the mass to crowd and tendency of (state) authorities to encourage crowd formation where there appears to be a tacit acknowledgement of the transformative nature of collective experience.

“The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

With this short statement, the famous composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart aptly captures the essence of the Interval spaces that this thesis was defining. Those are left-over or side-effect spaces, which have many programs but are not programmed. They emerged over time as a consequence of placing other primal and secondary objects. They become used by different agents in unprogrammed or instinctive ways. Due to their undefined nature, they become places of possibilities, change, freedom, and availability.

The aspect of time plays an important role both in creating them, and in their constant development. Firstly, they are created as a consequence of many layers of elements assembled at different time periods. They form a three-dimensional patchwork of layers of history, human actions, nature’s impact, and urban and architectural decisions. All the different layers leave traces on the site, which have an impact on one another.

Their constant transformation never ends. Those spaces always evolve. Even if the primal elements do not change for a period- new human activities are always emerging there. This is a fundamental aspect of the intervals- they give a sense of freedom and possibility. The agents feel liberated to express themselves and use the space in an undesigned way and sometimes even random.

This thesis focused on first defining and exploring the Interval Spaces and later using them to analyse the Project Site and imply their spatial logic into Architectural Design. A site in Marseille city center was mapped and analysed. It contained ancient ruins from various periods. The design focused on creating a spatial situation that would enable experiencing them in a completely new way. The logic of Interval Spaces was used to create spatiality and the experience for the visitors. This approach helped to create a completely new approach to designing with ancient ruins, but also to create new way of forming spatiality. Lastly, it explored and showed a new way of looking at sites. The site is no longer a modernist tabula rasa where a new project emerges in isolation to what used to be there, but it is a space full of traces of the past, which when taken into account in the new project can only add an enrich it.

We spent hours sitting in silence, until he turned his eyes away from the window and spoke: ‘I would like to tell you one last story, It has been decided, there will be no more travels beyond the edge for me.’ In the following days I heard, not one but five, stories of people M encountered – inhabitants of the land he traveled to. Truth be told, it did not seem like any of the earlier destinations. This place seemed somewhat deteriorating, lacking internal cohesion, subjected to pressure coming from the ‘core’. In the years to come it will inevitably become part of it, devoured by its insisting territory. Inhabitants of the land were gradually pushed to the edges, while the ‘core’ kept on indulgently swallowing their homes, imposing its own logic onto progressively flattened space. Some left, others opposed, finally there were those who decided to inhabit what was left of it - the place they once called home, now hostile environment they had to learn how to dwell in anew. In the midst of dust, rubble and tumbling buildings they found ‘the void’, squeezed between some remaining edifices. Those were largely industrious spaces, destined to provide for and fuel the becoming extension of the core. It seemed almost as if those people, like an anguished animal, were pushed into a lair, one that was not fit to receive them. They were forced to inhabit the toxic ground, polluted by the years of industrial activity, to use and reuse the existing material, scraps, debris and so on. Building their new home from the remains of the recent past, invoked rebuilding of a shattered mind, or fragmented memory. Indeed, their lives reflected in this peculiar architecture they were destined to soon call home.

The research and project evolved from the analysis of nomadic patterns of mobile groups original to the Almaty region of Kazakhstan prior to Soviet rule, which was then led to an investigation of nomadic metaphysics. The conclusion of this analysis suggests that aspects of mobility such as ephemerality and informality – long deemed as pathological threats to modern society– now need reconsideration and reinsertion within the sedentarist organization of our society and its physical spaces. In doing so, the needs of marginal mobile groups are acknowledged. This awareness guides the development of the project into the production of nomadic spaces up to the level of building design, guided by Deleuze’s theory of folds, proposing the replacement of alienating experiences of separate spaces by one where new spatial and social organizations introduce deeper levels of relation and interchange.

Barakholka, one of the largest bazaars in Central Asia, is
in the collision between tradition and modernity. Guided by actor-network theory, the project's research reveals the heterogeneity of activity networks in bazaars and the importance of logistics networks and infrastructure for trade activities. The project is about designing an inclusive space, a space of negotiation where heterogeneous entities and activity networks can coexist.