Keywords

1 Introduction

The modes of existence in today’s postindustrial, globalized, neoliberalized world are subjected to a constant state of change. The ways in which we perceive the world, communicate, produce, and consume are all transforming. Architecture, being one of the many human practices that build up culture, is no exception to this condition. As the modern, centralized, national state of the industrialized society is superseded by the postmodern, decentralized, global state of the postindustrial society, it could be argued that the discipline of architecture is shifting from professionalism to a post-professional condition.

As a profession based on the corporealization of power, architecture has been in close relationship with dominating power structures throughout its history. Yet it has never been focused on mere image production and creation of exchange value to the extent it is, in today’s neoliberal political climate. On one hand, globalized economy is celebrating the construction industry as a highly profitable means for capital accumulation. In the last two decades, while some cities such as Dubai were built from scratch, becoming new global business centers, some industrial cities on the verge of recession such as Bilbao were reinvented as artistic and cultural hubs by inserting iconic architectural pieces. In any case, architecture has become a tool for marketing cities in the global scene, leading to a simultaneous popularization of architecture and loss of disciplinary content.

This chapter focuses on the current state of the architectural profession and the practicing architect as a spatial intellectual in the global, neoliberal city dominated by the construction industry as an economic generator, reflecting on the possibility of an architectural practice beyond the constraints of the construction industry. This issue is handled through a threefold discussion. Firstly, an account on the condition of conventional urban space-making mechanisms at the age of neoliberal urban politics is given, through an in-depth analysis on the “construction” practices going on in the last 15 years at the city of Istanbul. As the cultural and economic capital of a developing country, namely Turkey, İstanbul has been going under a tremendous amount of construction work that has irreversibly changed the cityscape, during the 2000s. This quantitative magnitude is the reason why Istanbul is chosen as the case of this part of the discussion. Secondly, a reflection upon the conventional architectural practices in the global city of the twenty-first century is presented in order to understand the current condition, capabilities, and shortcomings of the profession facing the “construction frenzy,” as pointed out previously. Lastly, concluding remarks underlining the necessity for an architectural practice beyond construction are given. Here, the possibility of generating an architectural practice beyond the constraints of the construction industry, having the potential to produce alternative spatial practices that could go beyond being utilitarian tools for creating exchange value for the real estate market, having the potential to engage with urgent, real-life spatial issues, is addressed through looking into a number of cases throughout the world.

2 Construction: An Account on the Urban Space Production Practices at the İstanbul of 2000s

Construction has become an exhaustive economic and political mechanism that produces urban density and bigness, especially in the developing cities of the globalized world. With a population over 15,000,000 and a rapidly growing construction industry, the city of İstanbul in the 2000s is a vivid example of this condition. The last decade of urban space-making practices in Turkey, especially in İstanbul, has been dominated by a construction frenzy caused by a neoliberal alignment of capitalist market forces and urban governments. Within the last 15 years, not only has the city been growing toward the periphery but also the existing building stock at the center has been renewed via mechanisms of urban transformation. This vast construction activity resulted in rapid urban growth despite the loss of collective urban memory, destruction of public spaces and natural resources, transformation of the demography and property patterns of neighborhoods, an intolerable increase in urban density, and expropriation of the citizen’s right to the city.Footnote 1

The content and title of the 270th issue of Birikim Magazine being “Construction in the Name of the Prophet” give a valid summary for Turkey’s current neoconservative, neoliberal urban space policies in the 2000s (2011). Due to the neoliberal spatial policies of the urban governments of Istanbul in the last 15 years, capitalization of urban space has become not only the major resource for economic growth but also a battleground where opposing political agendas manifest themselves, clash and collide with each other. As the neoconservative, neoliberal political urban agenda of the current ruling government, namely the Justice and Development Party (JDP), was unfolded, Turkish society witnessed the manifestation of some of the most crucial political oppositions in its republican history through urban space. This manifestation was twofold: First of all, neoliberal urban governments that perceive urban land merely as a means for profit aimed to privatize, commodify, and capitalize public land, natural resources, and domains of underprivileged social groups within the city. This approach was reflected in the:

  • Privatization processes of large chunks of urban land (Zincirlikuyu Land of Highway Offices becoming Zorlu Center, Mecidiyeköy Liquor Factory becoming Quasar Istanbul, etc.),

  • Infrastructural projects jeopardizing natural resources of the city (Third bridge, third airport at northern Istanbul, etc.),

  • Urban transformation projects that aimed profit gain through confiscation and displacement of existing social groups in favor of a new, mid-high income demography who can afford the land value (Sulukule, Tarlabaşı, Ayvansaray UTP’s, etc.).

Coming to the 2010s, a supplementary cultural agenda of creating an architectural imagery of the “New Turkey,” as uttered by the JDP elite, became visible, in addition to the commodification of urban land. In line with the conservative values promoted by the government of JDP, a number of urban projects carrying a motivation of reflecting the “glorified Ottoman past,” “elevated Islamic culture,” and “governing power” besides the maximization of rent value were issued at especially politically charged, symbolic urban spaces of the republican era. Projects such as Çamlıca Mosque at Çamlıca Hill, Beştepe Presidential Palace at Ankara Atatürk Forest Farm, and the attempted remodeling of Military Barracks at Taksim Gezi Park could exemplify this agenda. All of these spatial implementations discussed above created public opposition on a regional or national scale, reaching to a peak at the Occupy Gezi revolts in the summer of 2013, triggered by the disclosure of the Taksim Military Barracks Project.

Hence, it is safe to say that urban space has been the focal point of political conflict and social confrontation in the Turkey of 2000s and Istanbul exhibits the crescendo of this condition. Streets, squares, parks, and neighborhoods of the city have become both battlegrounds and causes of the battles between:

  • capital trying to occupy urban space versus citizens defending their rights to the city,

  • objectives of the neoconservative “New Turkey” versus secular ideals of the republican era,

  • suppressive implementations of the central government versus civil forces of democracy.

The space production practices discussed above are charged with ethical, legal, economic, and political issues to such an extent that there is virtually no room left for architectural discussion. In other words, Turkey is going through a phase where construction, being the core of the economy, is maximized while architectural agenda is on the verge of extinction, bringing us to the question if it is possible to have an architectural discussion in this political climate at all, as posed by Akpınar (2014).

The “Mega Projects of İstanbul” provide a valid frame of reference for the discussion above. In the 2000s, more than 70 large-scale urban interventions having major impacts on the natural habitat, cultural identity, life quality, and urban memory of the city were issued in İstanbul by an urban consortium of central government, local governments, and large-scale capital. With an estimated investment cost of more than 77.5 billion USD and a surface area of nearly 350 km2, the “Mega Projects” of Istanbul, as declared by the “Mega Projects of Istanbul Research” initiated by the free Architects Association of İstanbul, exhibit the immense scale of construction going on in İstanbul in the last 15 years (www.megaprojeleristanbul.com).

In order to understand the agenda behind this construction frenzy, it is important to take a closer look at the nature of the so-called Mega Projects of İstanbul. Among these projects, five functional categories surpass the others by scale and investment cost. These categories are namely:

  • “The New İstanbul” project,

  • Transportation projects,

  • Infrastructural mix use projects,

  • Residential mix use projects,

  • Urban transformation projects.

The largest of the Mega Projects with the most crucial impacts upon the future of the city is probably the “New İstanbul Project,” consisting of the establishment of a new city of 245 km2 on the northern European side of İstanbul. Although the implementations for the “New Istanbul” city have not begun, it is evident that the urban impacts of such a grand-scale project will be immense.

The second largest project group is the transportation projects with an estimated cost of 29 billion USD, 76 km2 of land, and 550 km of transportation routes. Among the transportation projects, the third airport, being supposedly the largest airport in the world with 76 km2 of land, the third Bosphorus Bridge, and the Trans-European Motorway connecting Asian and European banks of the city, cutting through the northern forests of İstanbul, could be regarded as projects with irreversible impacts upon the natural resources of the city. Marmaray, Avrasya Tunnel, Bosphorus Tunnel, and Bosphorus Boat Parks could be named as other major transportation projects.

The third largest mega project category consists of infrastructural projects containing mix use functions, with an estimated investment cost around 16 billion USD, 3.7 km2 surface area, and 42 km length. This category consists of Canal İstanbul, being a secondary water channel along Bosphorus on the European side of the city and inner city ports/marinas with mix use functions such as Ataköy Port, Galataport, Haliçport, Haydarpaşa Port.

These three categories clearly imply the central government’s intention of opening up vast lands containing natural resources to urban development. To a great extent, the second and third categories could be seen as infrastructural preparations for the urban expansion of İstanbul, as the rent values have been rapidly changing around the project areas, following the issuing of these projects. The majority of the transportation projects such as the third airport, third bridge (Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge), Northern Marmara Motorway, and Canal Istanbul are in fact strategic infrastructural elements, issued directly by the central government that bypassed the 1/100,000 Istanbul Environmental Plan, attracting and transferring additional density and population toward the northern Istanbul where majority of natural resources, water supplies, forest, and agricultural land are located (www.kuzeyormanlari.org, 2015). Thus, it could be argued that the main agenda behind the transportation and infrastructural projects is to capitalize and commodify the unpopulated urban land at the expense of the destruction of natural resources. These projects raised intense public criticism and legal conflicts, yet the implementation of the third airport is still in progress and the construction of the third bridge is terminated, despite public and legal repercussions.

The fourth largest category is the mix use residential projects initiated mainly by the Housing Development Administration of Turkey (HDAT), being an institution directly connected to the central government. This category has an estimated investment cost of around 33 billion USD and 6.75 million m2 of surface area. These projects are located both at the inner city such as Mashattan (Maslak, by Taş Yapı), Maslak 1453 (Maslak, by Ağaoğlu Corp.), or Akasya Acıbadem (Sinpaş and Akkök Holdings) and at the outskirts of the city such as Bio İstanbul (Başakşehir, by Bio Istanbul Development), Bosphorus City (Halkalı, by Sinpaş Holding), or İstanbul Financial Center (Ataşehir, by Ağaoğlu Corp.). Either way, these projects are initiated by the mechanism of integrating big chunks of public land to the capitalist real estate market via privatization through the hands of HDAT.

The last major category is the urban transformation projects (UTP) with more than 14 billion USD of investment cost and 12 million m2 of surface area. Some of the UTPs consist of the urban transformation of historical residential areas within the city center, such as Tarlabaşı, Sulukule, and Ayvansaray UTPs, while other projects consist of the urban transformation of the slum areas at the periphery of the city, such as Ayazma UTP (Başakşehir) and Sarıgöl UTP (Gaziosmanpaşa). Both of the UTP mechanisms stated above have caused intense public oppositions, and legal conflicts as the main agenda behind these mechanisms have been the displacement of underprivileged residents with middle-upper income groups, creating a rent increase and land profit and therefore incorporating large chunks of urban land to the capitalist real estate market.

A third group of UTPs, such as Küçükçekmece and Kartal projects aimed to produce new urban subcenters, connected by Marmaray, therefore attracting urban density toward the southern İstanbul. Although this is a viable urban agenda, it is overwritten to a great extent by top-down infrastructural decisions that focused on the northern Istanbul, as discussed in (Table 5.1).

Table 5.1 Mega Projects of İstanbul: initiation years 2000–2015
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The Mega Projects of İstanbul are clear indicators of the overwhelming construction intensity taking place in the Istanbul of 2000s. As a city tired of construction, deprived of architectural discussion, urban space of Istanbul has become a commodity left with only one kind of value, being the exchange value. The semantic, cultural, natural and existential values of urban space are increasingly being disregarded. Even the use value of architecture is no longer valid as large scale, multiuse projects tend to be produced based on the design criteria of mediocre market practices, mass produced for an anonymous user, mainly for investment purposes. In this mechanism where the architectural client is almost never the actual user, the architect mainly produces tools for investment, not spaces where urban life can inhabit. As the urban density and congestion increase, public open spaces and natural resources diminish, resulting in a vicious cycle that produces unhealthy, antidemocratic, mediocre environments, and unhappy citizens. In such an economic environment based on property transfer from the community to a privileged few, “thinking outside the box” becomes imperative for a meaningful architectural practice (Çetin 2015). In order to discuss the possibilities of such a practice, it is important to take a closer look at the conventional architectural practice of the globalized, neoliberalized city of the 2000s.

3 Practicing Architect in the Globalized City: Possibilities, Capabilities, and Shortcomings

In the mid-1990s, Rem Koolhaas was celebrating the new, global urban scale as a generator of urban potential beyond the limits of architecture, in his well-recognized book S,M,L,XL. As stated in his words: “Bigness no longer needs the city; it competes with the city; it represents the city; it preempts the city; or better still, it is the city. If urbanism generates potential and architecture exploits it, bigness enlists the generosity of urbanism against the meanness of architecture” (Koolhaas and Mau 1995). Coming to the mid-2010s, it is no longer that easy to share Koolhaas’s enthusiasm about the potential of urban bigness, turning into a mechanism facilitating capitalist space production–consumption cycles. Antonio Negri criticizes the urbanism of bigness as he positions the architect in today’s global city with these words: “Bland, anonymous, repetitive, empty, dispersive, vacuous, risible, ‘post-existential’, and so on. We are here in a Rabelaisian situation, often full of sarcasm and intense irony, but with no smile. The metropolis we inhabit is a huge grotesque theatre with no exit routes, and effectively hopeless. The architect is tired. The same urbanism that was meant to defeat architecture and demystify the architect only survives as the non-planning of an indefinite and perverse metropolitan landscape. The architect, demystified, continues to exist as a worldly and bitter witness, a disenchanted accuser” (Negri 2009).

So what does this new, global urban scale of bigness do to the discipline of architecture? Not unlike the current global architectural scene, the effect of this situation toward professional architectural practice in Istanbul is twofold: On one hand, architecture and design in general are becoming booming professions as creative forces of a construction industry that forms the core of the national economy. Job opportunities and commissions for practicing architects are proliferating, and the clientele profile has been expanding with national–international investors as well as the central and local governments promoting large-scale urban development projects. It is possible to detect this sectorial growth by looking into the increase in the number of practicing architects in the last 15 years. 1323 registered architectural offices were operational in Istanbul in the year 2000 while this number increased to 3853 in the year 2015, indicating that the number of architectural offices in İstanbul almost tripled in the last 15 years. Consecutively, 9764 registered architects were operating in the year 2000 in İstanbul while this number became 18,249 in the year 2015, indicating that the number of architects in Istanbul almost doubled in the last 15 years (Istanbul Chamber of Architects 2015) (Table 5.2).

Table 5.2 Sectorial growth between the years 2000 and 2015
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These numbers clearly demonstrate the immense sectorial growth of the business of architecture in Istanbul in 2000s. When it is considered that 47,209 registered architects operate in Turkey in 2015, it is possible to get a clearer idea about the scale of architecture sector in Istanbul, forming almost 40% of the national sector.

On the other hand, architectural practice is so immensely dominated by the neoliberal policies focused on “building as a means for economic growth” that there is virtually no room for a professional discourse encompassing disciplinary ethics charged with social agenda, informed by spatial intelligence, formulated with public participation, aiming for the greater good. The national meeting held by İstanbul Bilgi University and The Building Information Centre (Yapı Endüstri Merkezi) focused mainly on this issue, posing the question if it is possible to “Discuss Architecture in Today’s Turkey?” in its heading (Günümüz Türkiye’sinde Mimarlık Tartışmak?, İBU & YEM, October 2015). The invitation text of the meeting, which brought together over twenty-five acclaimed practicing architects and academicians from Turkey, problematized this condition by underlining the difficulty of discussing architecture in Turkey due to the overwhelming suppression of the dominating political agenda. The introductory speech of the meeting, underlining that the urban space production, transformation, and consumption mechanisms in Turkey have become major axis for both politics and economy, posed the question of what kinds of architectural production and professional discussion grounds could emerge from this quantitative intensity and construction-based political agenda (Aysev Deneç 2015). A number of noteworthy approaches could be mentioned within the framework of the meeting. Some of the practicing architects responded to the question through reflecting on their own architectural and urban design approaches. Piker underlined the possibilities of publicizing architecture through rethinking the issue of housing (Piker 2015). Yazgan pointed out the intricate and multi-actored nature of building and the role of the architect within the mechanism, through the design and construction process of Ankara Arena Sports Center (Yazgan 2015). Çalışlar mentioned the challenges of operating creatively under the existing conditions of the building sector and the existing building codes that pressure for high density (Çalışlar 2015). Erginoğlu took the discussion to a further point by exemplifying the impact of building codes on the production of urban and architectural space through the example of Ortaköy (Erginoğlu 2015). Pekin underlined the need to understand the change between the professional and the post-professional era, in order to be able to operate as not only architects but also intellectual individuals living in the twenty-first century (Pekin 2015). Dündaralp exemplified a transgressing professional position of the practicing architect as a mediating agent between community and policy makers, while Gürdoğan displayed how architectural practice could be redefined at the edge of art, communication, technology, and proactivity through their work (Dündaralp 2015; Gürdoğan 2015).

While professionals seek to find answers within their practices, a number of academicians took a more critical approach toward the conventional urban space-making processes, demanding the discipline of architecture to take a more socially engaged stance. Güzer pointed out the irrelevance of the mainstream contemporary architectural agenda in Turkey with regards to the profound political, economic, and humanitarian issues the country is facing, underlining the need to redefine architecture as a point of resistance and rupture (Güzer 2015). Ertaş followed a similar track as she claimed that the architectural milieu in today’s Turkey is playing a game of “as if”, disregarding the social and political context and being stuck in the mere formal aspects of the discipline (Ertaş 2015). Baydar and Korkmaz separately underlined the fundamentality of taking a positively critical stance, in order for productive architectural thinking to emerge (Baydar 2015; Korkmaz 2015). Sargın called into question the possibility of a revolutionary spatial praxis, while Cengizkan underlined the essentiality of communal knowledge (Sargın 2015; Cengizkan 2015).

Some of the major points brought to attention at the meeting which manifested the crisis of the architectural discipline in Turkey in the post-professional era were:

  • The platforms of architectural discussion in Turkey today are quite barren, as pointed out separately by Tanyeli (2015) and Arolat (2015).

  • The architectural production in the Turkey of 2000s is hegemonized by the market-oriented rules of the construction industry and restrained by current building codes.

  • The conventional architectural agenda is ignorant to some of the crucial social, economic, and political issues the country is facing, such as social displacement, immigrant accumulation, gentrification, and poverty, stuck to the formal aspects of architectural design.

  • There is a call for a more socially engaged architectural practice.

As underlined by Rem Koolhaas, to be an architect who builds in today’s economy means to a large extent accepting the status quo (Goldhagen 2006). Yet, is it possible to transcend the status quo and become more than “architects who build,” adopting a professional understanding that focuses on a “useful practice,” as theorized by Perkes (2009). In order to open up a viable discussion on the possibility of an architecture beyond construction, it is essential to reflect on the dynamics of the conventional architectural practice in the global era. What do architects do? How do they operate? Which roles do they play in the complex network of neoliberal space production of today’s globalized city? Those are intriguing questions, especially in an age of spectacle where the “built object” becomes the main attraction. Of course there is no single story of “the architectural practice” but multiple realities within the profession, and the fact is far more complicated than the stereotypical answer of “designing beautiful buildings and making the world a better place,” as discussed by Awan et al. (2011). In fact, the nature of the architectural practice is charged with a multitude of professional positions often contradictory and dilemmatic. It is essential to understand the ambivalent nature of the profession in order to put into perspective the role of the discipline within the compelling political–economic context it operates within.

Probably the most dominating yet the least reflected upon aspect of the conventional architectural practice is the fact that it needs a client to exist, who is bound to impose his/her agenda to architectural production. Architectural design is in fact a dance of reconciliation between the design objectives of the architect, the demands of the client, and the realities and regulations of the real estate market. This is one of the major reasons why there cannot be an essentially autonomous architectural practice. Probably one of the most time conceiving tasks in an architectural practice is following up on potential clients. Only after securing the potential client, the actual, billable architectural design work could begin.

Coming to the architectural design stage, the first question comes to mind is about the nature of the prominent production of an architectural office. Contradictory to the common conception of the practicing architect being a master builder, the majority of the work produced in an architectural office are representations of an imaginary spatial existence, such as spatial analyses, sketches, graphics, diagrams, drawings, physical and 3D models and texts. Most of the architectural firms produce drawings in order to pitch their ideas and get a commission. In a highly competitive industry, this means that most of the creative work produced will not be transferred into reality. Architectural competition is another milieu where offices produce the majority of their intellectual work before being commissioned. Even after being commissioned for a certain project, a great deal of documents produced in an office involves revisions and alterations. Hence, the answers to the question what architects indeed produce are numerous representations of alternative realities. Only a minor percentage of these alternative visions are transferred into actual built space. It is safe to say that the main production of an architectural office is creative, visionary discourse, not buildings. The major task of an architectural designer is not only to design but also to convince different interest groups that their design proposal is the most rational, economic, proper, inspiring solution to a specific problem via an extensive representational palette. Hence, the architect is in fact more a storyteller than a master builder, as pointed out by Wigley (2002).

This operational model might suggest an inefficiency in terms of the business of architecture. As the conventional practice is billed by the size of the commissioned project, it is safe to claim that most of the work produced in an average architectural office is actually done for free, based on the nature of the architectural product revealed above. Even if the experimental nature of design methodology based on successive counts of trial and error is disregarded, this unintentional “pro bono” character of the practice might seem somehow inefficient, if not bad business. Yet, it is exactly this experimental, creative, and visionary focus of the practice that might propose a way to transgress the oppression of the neoliberal space production mechanisms.

The dynamics of the conventional architectural office, as discussed above, address to a number of dilemmatic, contradictory features. There is a set of almost mythological values attributed to the designing architect, through the social perception of the discipline. Then there are the realities of the conventional profession, created by the conditions of the real estate market. The architectural professional often finds himself/herself pendulating between the mythological and the reality, occupying different positions in every design process. In an overly generalized manner, some of the dilemmatic disciplinary positions the architectural professional finds himself/herself are stated in (Table 5.3).

Table 5.3 Myths and realities about the practicing architect
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4 Conclusion: Architecture Beyond Construction

Tschumi defines three probable positions for the discipline of architecture. The first is the conservative position advocating the status quo, serving to the political and economic priorities of the hegemonic power structures. The second is the critical position, continuing with the praxis that exposes the contradictions of the social structures. The third is the revolutionary position that utilizes the urban and spatial capabilities in order to produce new social, communal, and urban structures and strategies (1996). An architectural practice that has the capacity to transgress the post-professional condition and reach out beyond the norms and limitations of the construction industry is likely to fall into the third category. Such a practice is bound to revisit and redefine a number of roles and issues that are taken for granted within the norms of the conventional practice. A number of these issues are discussed below.

First of all, the architectural client should be redefined. As pointed out by Parvin, only 1% of the world population is wealthy enough to receive architectural service by being architectural clients (2013). This means that the 99% of the world population is bound to put up with the architecture created for the 1%, having no say at the production processes of the built environment they live in. Parallel to this fact, only 2% of the buildings on the face of the earth are designed by architects. These data clearly indicate that the problem definition of the conventional architectural practice is restrained within the limits of the urban agenda of the financially privileged few, hence becoming utilitarian tools for the physicalization of the capitalist urban agenda. The unaffordability and exclusivity of architectural service pose not only an ethical and democratic problem but also an inefficient business model. Redefining a new, public/communal client could be a viable strategy to break this vicious circle and transfer the spatial intelligence and know-how of the profession to the service of larger groups and communities. In other words, discipline of architecture should aim to provide service for the 100%, not the privileged 1%.

This opens up the issue of the redefinition of the practice itself as a proactive disciplinary existence. This stance requires a constant state of problematization and positive action, instead of searching for a paid commission with a predefined program. Beyond designing skills, the mediation role of the architect acting within a network of urban coalitions becomes imperative for such a professional stance.

Through the redefinition of the practice comes the redefinition of the position of the architectural professional. In such a transgressive practice, architects would reposition themselves as catalysts who transfer spatial knowledge in order to enable social and physical improvement, instead of master builders and designers. This would inevitably challenge the office culture of the practice, requiring a great deal of work to be done outside the office, working closely with the community in order to understand and meet their imminent needs.

This brings up the redefinition of the autonomy of architecture. Obviously, a discipline repositioning itself with the task as a mediating agent would project an engaged sense of disciplinary autonomy, being in a constant state of interaction, instead of an exclusive, confined sense of autonomy.

Another issue to be addressed is the restructuring of the modes of production. For one thing, the culture of change should be an integral part of the architectural production. New technologies that enable to share resources and information should be embraced. The archaic design production model based on copyright should be transformed into a more collaborative, open-source design understanding that puts weight on the design of processes, not objects. The practices should restructure themselves so as to be able to operate within global information networks. In connection to this, information management in the offices should be restructured in order for the tacit knowledge produced in the traditional design culture to be transformed into explicit knowledge that could be preserved, transferred, and shared.

In a nutshell; an architecture beyond construction should embody:

  • The redefinition of the client,

  • The redefinition of the practice,

  • The redefinition of the position of the architectural professional,

  • The redefinition of the office culture,

  • The redefinition of the disciplinary autonomy,

  • The redefinition of the modes of production,

  • The restructuring of the information management.

In order to reach beyond the limitations of the post-professional condition, the conventional design practice needs to evolve into the redesign of the practice itself, channeling the spatial intelligence of the architectural profession toward the production of applicable, realistic solutions for real, existential problems of communities, constituting the truly avant-garde visions of the discipline of architecture. Most importantly, it is imperative to understand the potential of “little victories” through the coming together of diverse coalitions, as pointed out by Pugalis and Giddings (2011). There are a number of architectural professionals emerging on different parts of the world trying to push the limits of their practice beyond construction.

The guerilla tactics are valid examples of such a stance as proactive, socially and politically as well as spatially engaged movements. Guerilla tactics aim to produce socially responsible, sustainable, cheap, and user-friendly solutions to urgent communal problems with speed and creativity that existing building regulations cannot meet. They tend to challenge the hierarchy of existing architectural and constructional production mechanisms with unconventional spatial interventions which are standing at the verge of legality, such as occupation. The works of Santiago Cirugeda (Urban Recipes) from Spain, Ricardo de Oliveira from Brasil, Kunle Adeyami from Nigeria, and Yasmeen Lari from Pakistan provide a number of interesting examples for this approach.

Another significant practice reaching beyond the limits of construction is the initiative, namely Architecture for Humanity (A4H), founded by Sinclair and Stohr (2006). Founded in 1999, A4H performed as an interface that aims to bring together the design professionals with the public client, meaning the communities in need, in order to answer urgent dwelling crisis emerged due to natural disasters, wars, epidemics with functional, easily applied solutions using local materials and manpower. Although the main branch was shut down in January 2015, the A4H network consisting of 59 branches aided 2.8 million people in 45 countries. The organization adapted the open-source model in 2005 and founded Open Architecture Network in 2007, being one of the first open-source databases where design ideas, documents, and resources were shared.

WikiHouse, being another open-source architectural database that contains the construction documents of single dwelling units that could be 3D printed and easily assembled on-site, provides an interesting example of the democratization of building production and accessibility of architectural service (Parvin, 2013).

These examples provide a small percentage of the architectural design practices in the post-professional era that deliberately engage with the urgent dwelling crisis around the world. In fact, there are numerous emerging practices that aim to reach out for the 100%, in search of a useful practice, transgressing the limits of the neoliberal urban space mechanisms of the construction. After all, architecture is not solely about building things, as pointed out by Betsky (2008). Buildings are just objects, yet architecture has more to do with creating visionary spatial approaches that has the potential to make the face of the earth, our home.