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YAHŞİBEY DESIGN WORKSHOPS
Dikili/İzmir ︎ 2006 ︎ Construction Area: 250 m2 ︎ Site: 1.000 m2 ︎ Education ︎ İbrahim Eyüp, Mert Eyiler, Nevzat Sayın, Onur Eroğuz





Internships are an integral part of architecture schools. When this extracurricular activity is put to good use, it provides an important experience for the student as part of his/her education. Reflecting upon the intersection points between the realistic practices of theory learned at school is critical; while the plethora on information on tools, materials, workers, and workmanship may seem detached, in time, it becomes complementary for students of architecture.  
    Therefore, we have been conducting a summer school for years with students from different schools and various academic levels.  I can easily say that we have taken important strides in terms of the productivity of the work and the benefits students reaped since we started holding the summer school sessions at Yahşibey. We treat these 15 days as an intense, compacted time period to muse over, discuss, and seek alternatives to themes such as the environment, tradition, craftsmanship, sustainability, mediocrity, habits, climate, etc.  
    Architectural education is often concentrated in cities and projects with large-scale programs; carrying this education to a village and shifting it to smaller-scale buildings also lends spatial continuity to this concentration. As we were offering these internships, when Emre Senan, our reason for being in Yahşibey in the first place, expressed his desire to establish a school of design, it was almost like a pure dream for me, because I had always thought that such initiatives are far more productive with occasional volunteerism. Ever since we decided to move these internships we initiated in 1999 with Han Tümertekin and İhsan Bilgin to the Aegean countryside, we were able to stay in one of the houses and work in the other. Much like the comfort of our school years: No Forms or Rules. When, during one of our discussions, Emre told us that he wanted a building for the school of design, we deliberated it at length. What kind of building should it be? How many students should come and stay for how long? Where should we all work and sleep? The more we talked, the more we designed the school’s curriculum and the ensuing program, which almost determined the project. A building comprised of two parts opening up to each other and a courtyard in between, accommodating ten students and an administrator would be the space for being together and doing something collective. The building was based on these ideas. It was so well defined that it came to life virtually with no changes and was built as such. Like others in Yahşibey, this building was constructed entirely by using local possibilities, though in a refined way of this construction method. The building possesses many of the things we would like to convey to the students.  
    The ongoing studies to date show the extent to which Emre’s seemingly dream-like desire was in fact based on such a simple reality: gathered around a roughly determined program with a distinct goal, as the volunteers work in spaces created by other volunteers that have managed to come and live together, another sparkle of good appears in this strange, introverted world, which it seems, is becoming increasingly globalized.
For the works carried out ︎︎︎ http://yahsiworkshops.com/