Wall: (DUVAR:) EXHIBITION
İstanbul︎ 2007︎ Exhibition ︎ Nevzat Sayın









Photos: Cemal Emden
“One of the most common sentences heard by an architect who has spent his education among the aphorisms of Modernism is that the exterior face of a building naturally forms itself as a result of the analysis of the interior space, and there is no need for additional effort for the exterior. Indeed, this was a sceptical proposition. As I observed that almost all evaluations of a building start from the outside, it became clear that this proposition couldn't be correct. There had to be a common solution for the interior and exterior without moving away from what they require. This idea transformed the wall standing at the intersection of interior and exterior into a very important architectural element. Initially, this wall issue, which was directly and solely related to architecture, branched out and became the ‘thing’ I was most curious about. Human beings, who were able to stand up on two legs and become vertical in spite of gravity, learnt how to build a wall, which is also a vertical production, while becoming her/himself. Using all the materials s/he could find, s/he erected the highest, longest, thickest walls. S/he demolished the walls of others and built new walls for her/himself. Today, and undoubtedly in the future, we will still be dealing with walls: to build and to demolish. The wall, which forms the intersection between inside and outside, is usually tried to be understood and made sense of with a definition based on what is in front of and behind it. However, the wall has a special importance as itself as well as the purpose for which it is built. In fact, what I am really curious about is this state of ‘being itself’.”
I wrote these lines in the introduction of FOL Magazine in 1998. Indeed, the thing I was most curious about was the wall. I don't know if it would have been like this if I hadn't been an architect, but there is no doubt that my being an architect increased this curiosity.
When Amelie proposed an exhibition, the idea of making an exhibition telling what we have done so far came to my mind. We could make an exhibition with projects, photographs, short-long explanations, and try to tell our story. We talked about this in the office, decided, and started preliminary work.
When I talked to Bülent Erkmen, he said that instead of such an exhibition, it would be better to go on a concept and make an exhibition around this concept. Erkmen would do the 'hidden' curatorship and design, and I would fulfill what he wanted. That's how the idea of the wall emerged. I sent Erkmen some of the wall photographs taken from what we did. "Okay, we can continue from here," he said, but he found the initial texts too 'poetic' and rejected them. I received a command saying, "Just write what you did and how you did it." I tried, sent it, and he approved it.
Cemal Emden was going to take the photographs. He had taken many of them before, and a few more would complete them. He did. The photographs were completed. The whole work -unintentionally- turned into a continuation of an article I wrote 10 years ago, ‘the wall becoming itself’. We tried to choose buildings and walls that were as dissimilar as possible, but the common denominator of all of them was why, how and what they were made of.