PARTICIPANTS ITU – CIRCLE Project

ITU PARTICIPANTS

Ayşegül Akçay Kavakoğlu is an architect and associate professor in ITU Department of Landscape Architecture. Her research interests involve design process, computational design, fabric formwork, representation and moving image studies in general. Akçay Kavakoğlu graduated from Dokuz Eylül University, with a Bachelor of Architecture degree.

She has conducted her master studies at Middle East Technical University and Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Belleville. She graduated from METU with her master thesis focused on the representation of city images in cinema. She got her Ph.D. in architecture degree from METU by researching the contribution of moving image to the computational design process. She executed several workshops and curated exhibitions. Akçay Kavakoğlu has worked on various architectural design projects and has awards in national architecture competitions.Ayşegül Akçay Kavakoğlu is an architect and associate professor in the Faculty of Architecture, Department of Landscape Architecture and Architectural Design Computing Program at ITU. Her recent research interests include the design and application of mediated environments, interactive systems, and artificial intelligence in architecture. She is a member of the ‘Technology, Ecology and Design Research Laboratory’ (TETA Lab) at ITU. She is an advisory board member at the ‘Architecture, Media, Politics, Society’ (AMPS) international, interdisciplinary research organization. She was the former Head of the Department of Architecture at Altınbaş University between 2017-2020.

She was the Architectural Design Advisory Board Member at IT Valley Turkey between 2020-2022. Akçay Kavakoğlu graduated from Dokuz Eylül University with a Bachelor of Architecture degree. She has conducted her master studies at Middle East Technical University and Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Belleville. She graduated from METU with her master thesis focused on the representation of city images in cinema. She got her Ph.D. in architecture degree from METU by researching the contribution of moving images to the computational design process. Her work also explores the intersection of architecture, technology, and pedagogy with a focus on computational design, fabric formwork, representation, and moving image studies in general. She executed several workshops and curated exhibitions. Akçay Kavakoğlu has worked on various architectural design projects and has been awarded in national architecture competitions.

Ayşegül Akçay Kavakoğlu

Ph.D.

Begüm Eser

M.Ud

Begüm Eser is a designer and researcher specializing in urban studies. Her primary research interests include planning theories, education, studio pedagogy, and studio education in urban planning. She works as a research and teaching assistant at ITU Department of Urban and Regional Planning. She earned her master’s degree from ITU Urban Design Graduate Program with a thesis titled «Semiotics in Spatial Design and Its Potentials in the Design Studio. She is currently pursuing her doctoral studies at ITU.

Bihter Almaç

Ph.D.

Bihter Almaç is a designer/researcher of architecture in the other end of the weird. And her research mainly focuses on tactics for peculiar creativities to trespass to the wilder realms of architecture to seek
existentially clumsy formations. Her work consists of drawings; architectural things – games, gadgets, devices; architectural essay films. These are exhibited internationally in festivals, curated exhibitions and conferences. Recently, she was selected as one of the Young Architects under 40 in Turkey, by The Circle O. She is an associate professor in the ITU Department of Architecture. She received her PhD degree in Architectural Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, with her thesis titled, Designing in a State of Distraction: The Wild Fields of Architecture. She has a MSci from ITU in Architectural Design, with her thesis titled: Folding of Places. She is a BArch graduate from ITU.

Eda Yücesoy is an associate professor at the ITU Department of Urban and Regional Planning. Her research focuses on spatial relations, social and economic geography, urban history, public space. She is the academic consultant at Istanbul Institute. Her latest projects include CommunityParticipatory Model Proposal for Healthy Cities (TUBITAK 2019-2022), Cultural Heritage Technologies for Sustainable Cities (Science Diplomacy Fund NWO 2020-2021), PIVOT Re-visioning Peripheral Geographies (UK Royal
Academy 2020 – 2021). 

Eda Yücesoy

Ph.D.

İmge Akçakaya Waite

Ph.D.

İmge Akçakaya Waite is currently an associate professor at the ITU Department of Urban and Regional Planning, where she received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. She earned her PhD in urban
planning in the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Luskin School of Public Affairs, with her dissertation titled “Planning, power, politics: Urban redevelopment in Istanbul.” In affiliation with UCLA and ITU, she has participated in EU, UN-Habitat and other internationally and nationally funded research projects on institutional and community capacity building, urban and rural governance, and inclusive planning. Among her recent fields of interest and teaching are decision-making and governance mechanisms, collaborative and participatory planning, and urban redevelopment.

Zeynep Günay

Ph.D.

Zeynep Gunay is an associate professor at the ITU Department of Urban and Regional Planning (URP). Her research explores heritage with a particular focus on critical narratives based on conflict heritage,
memory & heritageisation, and inclusive conservation as well as everyday life commons and justice. She has several international and national projects including Prizren Municipal Development Plan under the
supervision of UN-Habitat and UNESCO/WHC supported Istanbul Historic Peninsula Conservation Project, which was awarded a Medal in Europa Nostra Awards. She participated in Horizon 2020 MSCA-RISE Project on Art, Culture, Economy to Democratize Society (Trans-making) with her research on alternative narratives on heritage, arts and conflict in Morocco, Chile, Bosnia and Sicily. She acted as the academic consultant of Istanbul Planning Agency Vision 2050. Besides being a member of ICOMOS, she serviced as former Vice President and Board Member of the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP). She acted as ISOCARP’s Director of Young Planning Professionals’ Programme, where she commited to knowledge for better cities with the young generations. Until today, she has collaborated with various municipalities and institutes to lead capacity building workshops in China, Qatar, and Indonesia among others.

THE NAME OF ITU

One of the oldest technical universities in the world, has become identical with engineering and architecture education. ITU provides undergraduate education with 67 programs in 5 different campuses, 13 faculties, 1 conservatory, and graduate education in 7 institutes located in the center of Istanbul.

Being the architect of countless scientific and technological advances, ITU has succeeded many firsts. There are more than 400 laboratories and 17 research centers. ITU has the most ABET Accreditation in the world, with its 25 accredited engineering programs.

Students participating in the International Joint Degree Programs are entitled to double degrees by completing half of their education at partner universities in the USA. Offering double major and minor opportunities at many departments, ITU has the highest number of Erasmus exchange programs with nearly 1000 partnerships.

ITU is home to science-industry-technology with more than 2500 R&D projects carried out in ARI Teknokent. In addition, entrepreneurial students are supported with ITU Seed, also known as the “entrepreneurship ecosystem”.

The first cube satellite, the first electric minibus, the first hydrogen-powered boat, the first unmanned automobile, and the first domestic computer were manufactured at ITU. Besides, Turkey’s first television broadcast was aired from ITU, and the first university radio was founded by ITU.

ITU’s institutional history, intellectual memory and its esteemed environment builds a strong bridge from the past to the future. With its development in line with the requirements of the age, its innovative perspective and its structure that cares about establishing relations with the world; ITU is the university of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Partners

For more information, visit ITU Main Page, and International Office ITU

This project commits to empower new generations of professionals working in a circular transition with a socio-civic compromise. To that end, we establish the Circular & SOC Learning (CIRC.LE) Hub; a meeting point for students, professors, transdisciplinary experts, society at large, and decision-makers, working together with a circular and sociocivic compromise. In the Circular & SOC Learning Hub, students reflect on challenges by evaluating social and civic implications and become co-creators and active part of the challenge. This humanizing approach is here considered as the perfect complement to the technical skills for a true application of circularity principles. The CIRC.LE Hub creates a multi-stakeholder, participatory, democratic mutual learning and knowledge transfer platform and puts on the table complex dilemmas and “out of the box” ideas for students’ social and civic development and promoting local action and global thinking. This contributes to boosting the concept of the European Engineer. The pilot Circular & SOC Learning Hub will be promoted by the participating Universities and Associated Partners and then grow beyond this partnership.