MUDAHALE(V)
House as a method for embracing the city

Creating a personal corner at home allows individuals to regain a sense of belonging to the city when they create intervened corners in the public sphere as well. Transferring parts of the home to the public sphere emerges as an intervention method at this point.

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Heidegger sees things as unpretentious but significant guides in everyday existence. In other words, the intervention made by an individual becomes a place for the public.

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In a metropolis organized by complexity and speed, the emergence of surprises, opportunities, new relationships, new unions, and new possibilities is expected. So does a city like Istanbul, characterized by layers, variability, and intensity—where 'many' dominate—truly harbor 'many' possibilities? Or does the abundance of this city swallow and reduce the possibilities of the modern 'homeless' who do not live in it but survive in life?

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The region known today as Kurtuluş, whose settlement dates back to the early 19th century, represents exactly this 'abundance' concerning Istanbul. Although still referred to as an Armenian/Greek neighborhood, Kurtuluş actually forms a neighborhood network expected to be colorful due to accommodating people from all ethnic groups and economic classes. However, implementations made without considering the rights of the urban dweller by top-down decisions prevent interventions by those living within this network. This situation leads to the creation of alienated and homeless individuals in the city—silent inhabitants of the city—who only use the street as a path, creating scenarios of urban dwellers who pass by without pausing.

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Heidegger argues that the increase in alienation in contemporary life is what deprives people of their sense of place and belonging.

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"In modern cities where uprooted individuals collide with values limitlessly, the stability is replaced by transience; 'crowds' take the place of organic communities. The chaos of modern environments throws everyone into a whirlpool; into the whirlpool of constant fragmentation and renewal, struggle and contradiction, uncertainty and pain." The 'home' made possible by organic life and its stability is lost. Modern man is 'homeless.'"

Roysi Ojalvo, 2011

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"The objectification of the home, which was the fortress of private space and subjectivity, would not take long. The home, detached from its phenomenological context, would be dimensioned, defined with mathematical tools by measuring and shaping; it would be divided into parts and standardized, emerging as a new, efficient exercise area where the methods and rules of the rational objective world would be tested."

Nilüfer Talu, Home as a Desired Object

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When we bring the home into the city as an adoption method, the items that make a home a home, by changing scale, transform into creative public spaces. The home we bring to the neighborhood scale blurs its boundaries in this concept and serves to "gather the neighborhood under the same roof."

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1_Roof_spaces defined in the city where people can always come together

2_Stove_spaces where collective production activities can take place

3_Bed_corners for resting and break from the exhausting pace of the city

4_Refrigerator_common shopping spaces where product access can always be cheaply provided

5_Bookshelf_centers for acquiring and producing knowledge

6_Television_points of public access to visual information centers for shared usage

7_Curtain_efforts to create privacy and isolation in the density of the city

8_Sofa_points to come together for watching, sharing, and conversing actions

9_Rug_a texture whole that can be walked on with bare feet