For whom: University students and children of Düzce Village
With whom: UMÖB 15
When: 2015
Between July 27 and August 3, 2015 we were in Düzce Village of Seferihisar district of İzmir as a part of 15. UMÖB (National Architecture Students’ Meeting) Design Village İzmir event. 13 different workshops were held simultaneously in a week with a participation of 160 people. The garden of the village school hosted the participants in the tent area. As the main base of the event, some of the workshops, meals and evening conversations were again performed in the school garden.
In the scope of the Settle Down workshop, in order to discover the place we made experiments by acknowledging the village and the villagers and using the “games” as a tool in these places. On the first day of the workshop we visited the village as a group to discover the potentials and spent time in the village café to start a “place search”. It is determined that the villagers did not go out of their house/garden because of the hot weather and the absence of shadows in the streets. The children, who used to play in the school garden, hesitated to come because of the meeting. We decided to document the traditional games and establish a route within the theme of game. We formed three groups in order to collect information about the games from the elders of the village; to discover potential places such as streets, squares, historical buildings for the route together with children and design a game in a proper place. While we play and visualise the games that we learned from the elders and children, we also built a “game board” which every participant may contribute. In the later days of the workshop, we continued to experience and play our games on the roughly determined course while documenting and visualizing the games. In a shadowy place that we found on the front side of the mosque, the design and implementation of the “Agent” game continued together with the children by connecting ropes between trees. While it was planned to built seating units to encourage different kind of activities for local use, it was decided to repair the existing broken bank. On the last day of the workshop (Sunday), we invited locals to experience the “game” and the new playground with the announcements we posted to various places in the village. After playing our games and the games that we learned from them on the streets and the school garden, we began to play the “Agent”, which they waited with excitement.
We made a booklet including all the documented games and distributed it to the children and villagers. We also hanged the game board showing the game route next to the new playground. You can access the booklet here.
We would like to thank the participants for their work in the hot weather and their participation in the games; the children for accompanying us with increasing numbers during the whole process; the kind host of the people of Düzce village and of course the UMÖB team.
Here you can find the photo album of the workshop.
Participants: Büşra Ünal, Emre Gündoğdu, Dilay Keskin, Işılay Uzun, Irem Baş, Merve Coşkun, Merve Gül Özokcu, Mine Temuralay, Nazli Ceren Öztürk, Nurbanu Uyar, Sema Nur Aydoğan, Sinem Görücü, Şizen Türkal, Özge Baltacı, Yağmur Kınacı, Yağmur Kutlar
