PARTICIPANTS ITU – CIRCLE Project

PARTICIPANTS

Zeynep Günay

Ph.D.

Zeynep Gunay is an associate professor at the ITU Department of Urban and Regional Planning (URP). Her major areas of interests are urban conservation theories and policies. Through her scholarly works, she questions the vicious relationship between conservation vs reproduction of space with reference to neoliberal urban agenda; and explores heritage with a particular focus on critical narratives based on conflict heritage, memory & heritageisation, and inclusive conservation. She also reflects upon critical perspectives in urban studies ao. politics of urbanisation vs urbanisation of politics, culture arts and urban space, public space everyday life body politics and justice, with a specific interest upon the developing world. Within her academic and professional career in ITU, she also serviced as a visiting scholar in various international platforms including Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, TU Darmstadt, Tor Vergata, and Gran Sasso Science Institute. 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. Currently, she participates 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 and Bosnia. She is the academic consultant of Istanbul Planning Agency Vision 2050, the member of ICOMOS, and serving in the Board of ISOCARP for two terms as the Director of Young Planning Professionals’ Programme.

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

Derya Güleç Özer received her B.Arch in Architecture from Middle East Technical University in 2004, MSc. from Gazi University in 2007, and PhD from Istanbul Technical University Architectural Computing Department in 2014. She finished her master’s degree on “Integration of building energy performance assesment into architectural design studio”, and Phd on “Optimization of User Accessibility in Architectural Design Using Genetic Algorithm: Case Study on Health Campuses”. After PhD, she continued her post doctoral studies in MIT, Boston in 2015 with the Tubitak 2219 Scholarship. During post-doc studies, she conducted her research with Prof. Takehiko Nagakura on cultural heritage digitalization in Parion. Her interest in archaeology led her to work as an architect in such sites as Corinth, Sardis, Sagalassos, Parion and Syedra, and developed many on-site projects.

Since 2004, she has participated in many architectural and design competitions, and won several prizes. She also continues her practice through counseling interior design projects of high rise office buildings in Istanbul Finance Center.

Derya Güleç Özer

Ph.D.

İmge Akçakaya Waite

Ph.D.

İmge Akçakaya Waite is currently a lecturer 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.

Ayşegül Akçay Kavakoğlu is an architect and assistant professor in Faculty of Architecture, Department of Landscape Architecture at İstanbul Technical University. 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

Ph.D.

Bihter Almaç

Ph.D.

Bihter Almaç is a designer/researcher of architecture in the other and 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 a design tutor and a lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Istanbul, Turkey. 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 URP. 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 Community Participatory 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.

Begüm Eser

Designer

Begum Eser is a designer and researcher of urban studies. Her main research interests are contemporary urban design theory and method, design education in urbanism and studio pedagogy. She works as a research and teaching assistant in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning (URP) at Istanbul Technical University (ITU). She also is currently pursuing her PhD at the ITU. She graduated from ITU Urban Design Master’s Program with her thesis entitled: Semiotics in Spatial Design and Its Potentials in The Design Studio.

Elif Öz Yılmaz has been working as a research assistant in Architectural Design Program at İstanbul Technical University (ITU) since April 2019. Since then, she has assisted several architectural design studios in different years of study, during which she has had hands-on experience in various architectural pedagogies. She is also a Ph.D. candidate at ITU. Her research focuses on potentials of uncertainity in architecture design. She has a M. Sc. Degree from the Architectural Design Program at ITU in 2021. In her graduate work, she worked on the exploration of boundaries in children’s everyday spaces.

Elif Öz

Research assistant

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.