projects and articles by members
City and Obstacle / Workshop
Date: October 2003
Place: Ankara, Turkey
Time length: 2 days workhop
Partnerships: Chamber of Architects Ankara Brunch, Gönül Turgut Mentally Handicapped Kids Education Centre, sculptor Nevin Halis.
Participants: 21 children( both handicapped and non-handicaped) aged 11-16, 6 students from faculty of architecture, 2 volunteer architects, 3 teachers from education centre.
Goals/Aims: To meet with both handicapped (mentally and visionally) and un-handicapped children. To make children be aware of different kinds of lifestyle in city.
Methodology: To use drawing with hand- finger paint and to form the clay are expressing methods. Clay is an easily formed material and children do not have much effored while making finger paint. We use nourishmental colours on finger paint, so it doesn’t problem that any of children try to eat it. Drama is also used as a communication method.
Description of Events
The workshop was planned to become 2 days. In these days, the handicapped children and normal ones met and work together. The question “who is the owner of the cities” was tried to be answered. The main questions are who lives in the cities and who the other is. It was a special experience for the children and also for us. This situation, being with handicapped children, was not familiar to our daily life but we managed to face it.
The common senses were taste, touching and hearing. We had to find new forms to perceive. We have to create a new language. The words that we use freely in the daily life were meaningless. Because some of us doesn’t have as same knowledge as we have. So, the language was in metamorphosis. We have used the body language to overcome the difficulties among the children. We chose a city from Calvino’s Invisible Cities, called Sofronia.
Two half cities make Sofronia. In one half, there are swings, circus, tents, ice-cream and balloon seller. In the other half, there are schools, factories, government building, and banks. One half is stable and the other half is mobile. All the children get roles from the pieces of the city. To become live, happy and active, the one half has to wait for the other half. For being the real Sofronia, the parts must be together. Where other part is questioned. We have to look for the other half to be a real city. Children used sounds for expressing happiness of being together and the silence of being seperate. Parallely, they had to touched each other, these broke the ices.
We wanted children to draw their city image in their own world. Finger painting method used for this work to make painting simple for the handicapped children. So, they are as free as the other children. While painting they make connections between each other, they explainded what they are drawing. In the second day, the products that the children made were shared with citizens.
Outcomes: With the help of the millions of stimulus circumstances, we all perceived living like them, realized that cities have some obstacles for some of us. It is important to give changes to be in a social area, to be in street together.
