< terug

Selen Sürmeli – Zeliha Öztürk: INBETWEENNESS

Inbetweenness is a research project* that focuses on the conditions regenerate
in between territories, cultures, identities, and physical/imaginary states. The project presents visible and invisible layers in urban context while providing an intervention that catalyzes potential conflicts and tensions in urban/spatial level and mediates contrasting elements and existed conditions.

The research starts with approaching binary oppositions that work with the “either/or” logic, and explain the twin phenomenon that corresponds to the binary oppositions. In-between is the only space where both two poles are visible and penetrating each other, a process or becoming. On the other hand, in-between can be seen as the contour between the figure and the background, yet it belongs to both sides. Based upon that understanding about in-between, our research topic deals with that question: What’s inside of the contour? What would be if we blur the contour?

As a first step, we investigate the social and physical layers in two dissimilar districts: Matongé and Leopoldswijk, by using mapping. The investigation leads us to a virtual topography map that we can compare the range of in-betweenness in those two neighborhoods. For us, the contour is the specific finding territories where located between most and less overlapped layers. The extraction of the most and less overlapped territories derives us to think about the in-between sphere.

We use the same mapping study in those finding territories that we consider as the contour. As a result we focus on four different public spaces where the layers overlap in different sizes, ranges, shapes, and hierarchy.
While we investigated the visible layers of the in-between public spaces (coding), we aim to decode those physical environments and manipulate the set of layers in after steps.

As a concept, we rethink about what a public sphere can be. Based on the mind maps and researches, we come up with a question: Can a public sphere tend towards the coincidences that can be experienced and unexpected discoveries can be made?

“The fragmentation of everything and everyone in a confused mass that forms an information bubble would then function as a totalizing ideology for our antitotalitarian world. …the general precariousness may be understood in connection with a culture in which there is no longer any master narrative- historical or mythical” N.Bourriard. The quotation of N. Bourriaud that refers to the radicant idea, gives us the inspiration of writing scripts as a decoding method. With that method we visualize the actors and the layers in public spheres step by step. Those steps investigate how are the actors and the visible layers are communicating and
becoming a part of multi-dimensional place-making. As a result of that study, the collages show a simulation of how would that public space can be seen.

Our eagerness to see the blurriness and the contour, we overlap the different spheres and actors. Our idea is to create a fictional space that includes the possibilities from different scripts with a combination of them.

Lastly, as an intervention we move the alternative script in a physical territory. The aim of doing is to create a fragmented space and embodying the inherent tensions and conflicts between disparate elements of the program and the site. The alternative script is creating a set that interferes with actors, emotions, identities, and responses to the physical site. Manipulations of the layers shape the set and define it as a metiator. The set itself is performative, emphasizing continuity, interference, and interaction; rather than stability and separation.

To see the process and the becoming, we use rooms based on performative placemaking. With the help of different textures, senses, materials, and height; we create an illusion of a fragmented public sphere. This is a space that hosts different actors and scenarios.

* A research project that is developed by Selen Sürmeli and Zeliha Öztürk for The Radicant Design Studio that is held by Caroline Sohie and Cecilia Chiappini in KU Leuven Master’s Architecture program.