Venice Architecture Biennial
We would like to share that our collaborative research on earthen architecture was featured at the Pavilion of Türkiye at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia. Curated by Ceren Erdem and Bilge Kalfa around the theme “Grounded” (Yerebasan), the exhibition reimagines earth as a living archive, natural intelligence, and a dynamic laboratory for contemporary spatial practices.
Together with Fulya Akipek and our interdisciplinary teams, we contributed to the pavilion with three architectural prototypes:
- Common-action Walls: A re-production of our 2017 rammed-earth wall system that explores contemporary formwork technologies and geometric research.
- BIRE-PAN: A research prototype supported by Istanbul Bilgi University, investigating the mechanical enhancement of compressed earth blocks through biological additives, realized in collaboration with Fibrobeton.
- Robotic Earthcrafts (REC II): A project from our student workshop at Bilgi Architecture, focusing on robotic fabrication for custom earth-block formwork design.
Digital design and fabrication tools can often feel distant from nature. However, in these projects, our primary goal was to bring advanced digital workflows and traditional earth building techniques together into a unified material dialogue. At times, computational geometry pushed the physical boundaries of the material; at other times, the natural behavior of earth redefined our digital parameters. As architecture continuously evolves alongside the environment, we believe the intersection of computational methods, biomaterials, and collective intelligence offers answers to today’s ecological questions. We are grateful to the curators, our collaborating institutions, and the entire team for bringing this to the international stage.
Cite this post
Related Posts
Robotic Earthcrafts Student Project: ZOM
November 6, 2018
This project is developed in the summer workshop titled Robotic Earthcrafts conducted at İstanbul Bilgi University Architectural Design graduate program. Students call this project “ZOM”. Students are Murat Sökün, Zeynep Çakmak, and Özlem Güven. We organized the workshop together with Fulya Akipek and Hülya Oral. You can find more details about the workshop here. In this project, a simple robot code created the EPS molds of the rammed-earth module. Below are some of the photos of the design and construction…
Intra)/value
August 16, 2026
The group exhibition 2 Years 10 Meters, curated by Natalia Schmidt, opened on April 24, 2024, at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. My name was also included in the exhibition due to the projection graphics in Didem Yalınay’s artwork Intra)/value. This was another step in Didem’s long-term project. She hated being called a “Digital Artist.” She produced wonderful works with Seçkin Maden. I was fortunate enough to accompany her as a modest collaborator on one of her pieces….
Growing an Architectural System
November 3, 2018
This paper covers ongoing research titled “Growing an Architectural System”. It is an interdisciplinary work relating permaculture studies with computational design and production technologies. It includes testing some issues of performance via full-scale prototypes. Growing Pots is the first study we will mention in the paper. It is about the design of a micro-permaculture system and 3d printed products realized by students of an elective course. On the other hand, in the second part of the paper, we explain the…
BIRE-PAN
August 18, 2026
This project aims to promote the widespread use of earthen architecture in new urban and rural developments, in line with the overarching goal of sustainable cities. The potential solutions earthen architecture offers across various dimensions, such as human health, efficient resource utilization, locality, economic viability, and cultural continuity, can only be realized to the extent that they are integrated into the construction sector. When the vernacular knowledge embedded in local architectural solutions is enhanced through modern design-to-production technologies, earthen architecture…
Robotic Earthcrafts III
August 16, 2026
Last month, we completed the third edition of the Robotic Earthcrafts workshop series, which I co-organized with Fulya Akipek, following the first in 2018 and the second in 2023. An earthen mixture composed of clayey soil, lime, fibers, and cement was rammed into molds produced via robotic hot-wire cutting. The geometry of the fabricated wall is based on a hexagonal grid and features a Truchet-like variation. Constructed using four different block types, the wall was completed within 5 days and…