Kadiköy Public Education Centre
Established in 2006. Live in Istanbul.
Taking Istanbul as a starting point, the project seeks to establish a platform of optimism by drawing attention to the propositions of‘ other’ modernities, and the way they offer multiple ways of reinterpreting contemporary times by gesturing at‘ other’ reference points of spatial practices. Based on architectural and urban issues; the keywords will be participation, innocence, schizophrenia, negotiation, power.“ Innocent Act” will realize several workshops, discussion events and a library project at“ Kadiköy Halk Egitim Merkezi”( Kadiköy Public Education Centre, KAHEM). The building was built in 1938 in the heart of Kadiköy on the Anatolian side by Rüknettin Güney, one of the leading architects of the early republican era.‘ Halkevleri’( public houses) which became one of the most symbolic institutions of the early Turkish republican era functioned as a tool for transmitting the values, principles and ideologies of‘ modernity’. From this perspective,‘ halkevleri’ were representative institutions of the functionalist view of the republican ideology unfolding in public space, and narrating Turkey’ s project of modernity. By using the building, studioKAHEM aims to raise innocent actions and questions about the relation between nation-state ideology, modernity and spatial practices, while at the same time experiencing the responses of the building to contemporary happenings.
As a collaborative event, the“ City of Collision” project by Philipp Misselwitz and Tim Rieniets will be integrated to the program in the form of exhibition, book launch and panel discussion.