For whom: Adana Tepebağ Neighborhood
With whom: Chamber of Architects of Adana, Çukurova University, Seyhan Municipality and university students
When: 2019
The “Tepebağ Summer School – New Lines with Old Tracks” workshop organized by Adana Mimarlar Odası with the contributions of Çukurova University and Seyhan Municipality between 30 August and 7 September 2019 with the aim of promoting Tepebağ Tumulus nationwide and improving conservation awareness in society. We conducted a workshop among 6 workshop groups in that event.
In the workshop, which intends to discover 3500 year old traces of the city and to reinterpret them, the notion of conservation and its’ related local/global definitions and the relation of the city with these contexts tried to be examined. The spatial relationship of the region known as the historical city center to the city was studied and Tepebağ and Kayalıbağ regions were analyzed and supported by field trips and seminars within the contet of conservation. During the workshop seminars of Duygu Saban – Story of Adana, Nur Umar – Adana Tepebağ Urban and Archelogical Site Conservation Project, İnana Abdelli and Kesra Mansuri – Parametric Design, Murat Sönmez – New Architect, Kasım Çelik – Lightning Design, Alp Arısoy- Conservation and Vitalization at Urban Scale in Historical Site Özlem Şenyiğit -Parasite Architecture were realized at Kısacıkzade Mansion.
In the workshop, which consists of 30 students fromdifferent universities, urban gaps in the historical urban texture of Adana were tried to make available for reuse and make it visible. In accordance with this purpose, together with 5 workshop participants, we thought that the main problem of Tepebağ was becoming a blind spot with the migration and disasters through the years in addition of being a prominent settlement. We took advantage of the busy capillaries of the city to carry Tepebağ back into the city flow. These studies pushed the participants to form a
route of interaction: they defined the ‘effect’ part of the concept of interaction as touches to Tepebağ and decided that these effects would be in two kinds. First; to refer to the lack of conservation of context and to develop critical approaches to the sharpness between old and new. The second one; to construct the ways according to the local values, with which local people and tourists use designs.
During the workshop, we aimed to create new potentials for local people and tourists with the proposed designs for historical structures and existing gaps. We aimed to increase the sense of belonging for the local people and for tourists, we wanted to re-experience values that have not been realized for a long time. We talked about how, when, how much and by whom will be the designed experience perceived and gets attention. We discussed about what kind of connotations will our purposes and non-purposes will create and then, we designed them to complement each other.
The contribution of the workshop to us and to participants, in which 30 architecture students from different universities worked 14-15 hours of per day in the same place, is undeniable. We would
like to thank Chamber of Architects of Adana., Çukurova University, Seyhan Municipality for their invitation and to the local community for their support in our researches.
Here you can find the booklet of the workshop designed by Chamber of Architects of Adana.
Workshop coordinators: Altıner Yıldırım, Fırat Altundağ, Setenay Kamazoğlu, Meltem Menteş (Chamber of Architects of Adana)
Workshop participants: Dilara Kayapınar, İzel Gürkan, Melek Yakan,Metehan İçli, Seda Tuzcu
