Woodbury University’s ‘Istanbul Study Abroad Workshop’ was a 6-week intensive curriculum including design studio and seminar. Together with the workshop director Alex Suarez, Superpool conceptualized and instructed the design studio.

The assignments focused on the production of critical observation and analysis of Istanbul’s urban operations. The operations provided the design impetus to examine the principles and nuances of materiality in ‘handmade’ design fabrication.

The students have been asked to work with a limited material palette of felt, plaster and fabric molding to develop full-scale designs. The aim being for the studio to accumulate an understanding of material qualities in real scale, instead of representational scales commonly used in both the education and practice of architecture.

The use of fabric molding in the designs facilitated an uncontrollable factor, used as an analogy to draw attention to the balance and control of real-life design processes from conception to realization, where the architect seldom has total control but orchestrates different dynamics.

Workshop Director:
Alex Suarez

Workshop Teaching Assistant:
Iva Kremsa

Studio Instructors:
Alex Suarez
Selva Gurdogan
Gregers Tang Thomsen

Students:
Joseph Ferrugio
Gal Kelman
Sharon Ko
Christine Scotti
Heather Watkins

Thanks to:
Platform Garanti, Garanti Galeri, GAD, Joshua Stein, Yeliz Ozsoy