Using materials to erect a building is the essence of the architectural profession. Determining the usage of these materials, their juxtaposition, their mixing and their texture is the purpose of the design. Organizing them to create a shape, a habitable volume and a surface with specific properties is the know-how of an architect. But to create an aesthetic from new and virgin matter is an easy task, however, resources for unused materials are getting scarce because of overconsumption and their transformation in waste after first use. But what if being a designer was to give a new purpose to disused materials? What if being an architect was giving a new life to discarded matter? What if the act building was actually collecting waste to transform them into a new object more deeply connected to its users’ life?
This is what we would like you to do during this workshop, we are inviting you to cross the boundaries of the material world from brand-new to waste and from discarded to innovation, we are calling you to discover a movement in the matter that will blur the boundaries between abandoned and disused elements and create a new circulation of materials. We are counting on your inventiveness to find new usage of what is unused.
During these 3 days of the workshop, we will accompany you on the design of a new and innovative way of designing wall elements with waste that you will find around you. By groups of 4 students, with the partnership of Dr Deniz Uçer Erduran (Bilkent University), Matthieu Pedergnana, Ömer Can Bakan and the YU Faculty of Architecture and the inspiration given by the work of Soren Nielsen (Vandkunsten architects – DK) you will create real-size mock-ups of wall cladding, infill or structure, using at the best the properties of the materials you will have collected and brought for this workshop.