pedagogy

Part of the Socially situated Architectural Pedagogies Project (SArPe) (Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union)

The SArPe project brings together a multi-disciplinary consortium of experts from the University of Pavia, the University of Malaga, Istanbul Technical University, and the TU Delft to promote collaborative and inclusive approaches to architectural education. This project aims to challenge traditional architectural roles and perspectives by working with people from diverse backgrounds and co-creating architectural knowledge. The collaboration with the Zero Discrimination Organisation, which works to empower Roma communities in Turkey, and SpazioGioco, an organization based in Pavia that advocates for inclusive playgrounds, underscores the importance of creating synergies and having a strong impact while foregrounding civic values and ensuring participation.

Stories of Situated Pedagogies in Architecture and... Workshop, 2023
Aslihan Senel, Bihter Almac, Buse Ozcelik, Busra Balaban, Elif Nur Adiguzel, Oyku Simsek


Gathering educators and learners from around the globe, this international workshop

provided a unique platform for the exchange of stories centering on situated pedagogies

within the realm of architecture and beyond, emphasizing a keen interest in critical

spatial practices. Responding to an open call, applicants shared personal educational

experiences coupled with critical reflections, marking the initiation of a dynamic and

collaborative communication platform. Envisioned as a manifestation of slow and

caring connectivity, the workshop aimed to unite educators and learners who had delved

into transformative pedagogies.

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Kitchen Stories, 2024
Aslıhan Şenel, Aylin Vartanyan, Elif Adıgüzel


This 3-month long workshop series, based on

coming together with women and children living

in Kustepe at the Kustepe Neighborhood House

and sharing our knowledge by cooking together

in a kitchen environment, was carried out with

a desire to get to know a neighborhood slowly

over a long period, in contrast to the rapid

urban renewal taking place in Istanbul. The

friendship we built by cooking together and

sharing our stories about food transformed

into dreams we collectively envisioned for the

future of the neighborhood house.

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Stories of Situated Pedagogies in Architecture and...II: Struggles, Failures, Pursuits, 2024

Aslihan Senel, Bihter Almac, Buse Ozcelik, Busra Balaban, Elif Nur Adiguzel, Oyku Simsek


It was a half-day open event of seminars and discussions, which focused

on struggles and failures of educators on their pursuit of situated

pedagogies. The concept of situated pedagogies suggests that knowledge is

produced through partial, subjective, embodied, and multiple perspectives.

Through the conceptualization of knowledge as being produced rather than

being transmitted, situated pedagogies question the static positions of

educator and learner, and instead suggest a transformative-relational

agency for both. The aim of this event was to share such transformational

experiences on situated pedagogies and explore the possibilities of new

forms of situatedness.

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Architectural Slow Cooking, Imagining Commons Beyond Popular, 2024

Aslihan Senel, Bihter Almac, Buse Ozcelik, Busra Balaban, Elif Nur Adiguzel, Oyku Simsek


In the Kustepe neighbourhood of Istanbul, we imagined a slowing

down of the popular patterns of rapid urban renewal discourse

and we demanded for involvement in the decision-making

processes with our spatial practices around a communal kitchen.

Those spatial practices included co-designing lightweight

kitchen appliances, composting, collecting seeds to grow edible

gardens, cooking together, mapping food networks, writing

cookbooks, making and disseminating fanzines, sharing and

caring around food, and negotiating our position as architects

and urban designers in the community as we work with the

community.

During the 6-day summer school, an international group of

learners and educators worked at and around a community house,

listened to seminars on the subject, met with the decisionmakers,

activists, and community members, and pursued several

urban fieldworks. In this summer school, students who are

interested in architectural community work, collaborative,

intercultural, and interdisciplinary ways of working, and

questioning the roles of the architect and architectural

education came together to think of alternative ways of urban

renewal.

Situated Architectural Pedagogies of Co-Making/Becoming- A Non Conference, 2025

Aslihan Senel, Bihter Almac, Buse Ozcelik, Busra Balaban, Elif Nur Adiguzel, Oyku Simsek



In Situated Architectural Pedagogies of Co-making/-becoming, we are interested in those situated architectural pedagogies that specifically search for ways of co-making/becoming within the learning environment and beyond, and among human and other-than-human collectives. We would like to explore how educators and learners respond to sites of architectural practice, education and research with critical and ethical concerns. This event is a continuation of a series of others that we have collaborated in the context of SArPe: two educators’ workshops; Stories of Situated Architectural Pedagogies in Istanbul and Engaged Learning in the Community University in Delft, three community-driven student workshops and a conference session called Commoning in Architectural Pedagogy. Like the previous events, this non-conference calls for educators and learners who would like to collectively create and share a non-competitive and caring environment, with the intention of disrupting the hegemonic pedagogical and academic canons. The non-conference participants will be invited to roundtable discussions, play sessions, and site visits over the course of 2 days. This event aims towards a book that speculates on the modes of co-making, co-becoming, co-authoring, and other enchanting socialities of collective imagining that dispute academic hegemony. We call for 300-word statements of interest from those educators and learners who have pedagogical experiences and experiments in such relations of co-making/becoming.