The Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV) has released details about the Pavilion of Turkey, the Turkey Pavilion will present "Architecture as Measure" at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition in the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale themed as "How Will We Live Together?" by Hashim Sarkis. 

The 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale will be taking place from 22 May to 21 November 2021 in Venice, which was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Co-sponsored by Schüco Turkey and VitrA, the Pavilion of Turkey is located at Sale d’Armi, Arsenale, one of the main venues of the Biennale.

The official website of Architecture as Measure, which will serve as the pavilion's main publication platform, has also been launched. The platform will continue to present content by invited contributors and the pavilion's curatorial team periodically over the course of 2021.

Curatorial team for Architecture as Measure (from left to right): Neyran Turan, Ian Erickson, Betsy Clifton, E. Ece Emanetoğlu, Melis Uğurlu, Samet Mor. Images courtesy of IKSV

"Architecture as Measure" is curated by Neyran Turan, founder of NEMESTUDIO and Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture at the University of California-Berkeley, alongside Assistant curators E. Ece Emanetoğlu, Melis Uğurlu, Betsy Clifton, and Samet Mor. 

The editorial assistant is Ian Erickson. Exhibition design will be prepared by NEMESTUDIO. Visual identity and graphic design are designed by Paleworks (Yağmur Ruzgar and Ozan Akkoyun). 

The theme of Architecture as Measure will focus on the relationship between the quotidian and the planetary, it will suggest another route for architecture’s relationship to the world, in which it is more of an agent than a mere respondent.

Image courtesy of the Pavilion of Turkey

"In light of the current climate crisis, what can architecture contribute towards a new planetary imagination of our contemporary environment beyond environmentalism and technological determinism?," said a statement. 

"Rather than limiting the role of design simply to a solution to the problem of climate change, can we speculate on architecture as a measure through which the environment might be reimagined? Architecture as Measure positions climate change as a cultural and political idea that requires a renewed architectural environmental imagination."

Arsenale area. Image © Andrea Avezzu, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia

Taking Neyran Turan’s recently published book Architecture as Measure by ACTAR Publishers in 2020 as a theoretical preamble, the exhibition defines the planetary as the vast geo-temporal scales through which climate emergency accelerates. But instead of seeing the concept of planetary imagination purely as preserving nature, or as technological management or visualization, it is important, at this moment, for architecture to consider the potential of planetary imagination from within its inner workings. 

"Accordingly, architecture needs to see the larger questions around planetary imagination and the everyday aspects of its own making as one and the same thing," added the statement.

Presented through an installation, a website and storytelling, the Pavilion of Turkey focuses on the politics and nuances of the seemingly mundane aspects and sites of architectural construction from material extraction to supply chains, maintenance and care in Turkey and beyond. 

The installation component of the exhibition comprises four dioramas, each focusing on specific sites of architecture. In addition to the installation, the exhibition extends to a website as its main publication platform. Presented through four different sections—Paperwork, Episodes, Conversations, and Essays—the website will publish content by invited contributors and the curatorial team periodically throughout 2021.

Neyran Turan - Architecture as Measure, courtesy of the Pavilion of Turkey

The Paperwork section of the website will present the exhibition’s main research content on the bureaucracy of architectural documents that enact, facilitate, and normalize the protocols of extraction, logistics, construction, and maintenance through material curated by the curatorial team along with invited contributions. 

Through drawings and storytelling, the Episodes section will capture specific environmental controversies in a series of selected sites in Turkey while colliding the architectural and the planetary, the human and the more-than-human, the mythical and the everyday. The Conversations and the Essays sections will present various invited contributions aligned with the themes of the exhibition.

Neyran Turan - Architecture as Measure, courtesy of the Pavilion of Turkey

In 2015, Neyran Turan presented STRAIT at Salt Beyoglu, the STRAIT was based on a geographical fiction with illustrations and drawings, telling the story of a colossal oil tanker becoming stuck in the Bosphorus Strait. It was presented in the form a silent film.

Top image: NEMESTUDIO and the Architecture as Measure curatorial team, On the Backdrop/2020. Perspective, digital drawing, courtesy of NEMESTUDIO and the Pavilion of Turkey at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.

> via IKSV