Papers by Büşra Balaban
This text-based research essay, through the theory and practices of mapping, suggests a non-dicho... more This text-based research essay, through the theory and practices of mapping, suggests a non-dichotomous conceptualisation of interiority. It offers to probe the potentials of ambiguities and multiple meanings of an interior rather than the traditional oppositions such as inside-outside, private-public, female-male invoked by the term interior. We argue that interiority is not a fixed entity but a continuously changing state through the relationships formed among the imagined, remembered, and lived spaces of a subject. Our research is centred around a study of filmmaker Chantal Akerman's Les Rendez-vous d'Anna, which traces filmmaker Anna's encounters with hotel rooms, stations, and trains as she travels through different cities to promote her film. Akerman's film introduces interiors provoked by uncertain and unfamiliar modes of interiority by interrogating its habitation through the peculiar tactics of filmmaking and viewing. By mapping this filmic interiority, we argue for 'non-interior' as a critical and creative way of approaching an interior. Non-interior is not the opposite of interior, nor an in-between position of interior and exterior, yet is concerned with what is unknown, what is excluded, and what is unheeded. It aims to theorise and practise an uncertainty of the interior without assigning a single static definition. The research of a non-interior offers ambiguity, multiplicity, and uncertainty to an interior, allowing us to explore interiority within gradual shades of its materiality as a room, a threshold element, or a piece of furniture. Mapping came to the fore as a method of this research, which performs the filmic topography. It suggests an embodied practice of film viewing, including the authors' analytical and emotional responses to the encountered representation of the interior. Mapping enables us to explore the potential of filmic representation to blur the presumed definitions and conventional boundaries of the concept of the interior. By mapping filmic interiors, we reveal ambiguous states of the interiors we encountered in the film and multiply their layers of uncertainty. These mapped uncertainties allow the interior to be questioned and the non-interior to be produced. In particular, non-interior draws on the non-dichotomous approaches in art and architecture such as Robert Smithson's 'non-site' , Pascal Bonitzer's 'de-framing' or 'off-screen' , and Rosalind Krauss's 'expanded field' to explore ambiguity as a critical tool in order to understand the uncertainty of an interior. Mapping of non-interiors proposes architectural theory and representation that consists of fragmented, subjective, situated, and embodied knowledge of interiors.
idea journal, 2023
This text-based research essay, through the theory and practices of mapping, suggests a non-dicho... more This text-based research essay, through the theory and practices of mapping, suggests a non-dichotomous conceptualisation of interiority. It offers to probe the potentials of ambiguities and multiple meanings of an interior rather than the traditional oppositions such as inside-outside, private-public, female-male invoked by the term interior. We argue that interiority is not a fixed entity but a continuously changing state through the relationships formed among the imagined, remembered, and lived spaces of a subject. Our research is centred around a study of filmmaker Chantal Akerman's Les Rendezvous d'Anna, which traces filmmaker Anna's encounters with hotel rooms, stations, and trains as she travels through different cities to promote her film. Akerman's film introduces interiors provoked by uncertain and unfamiliar modes of interiority by interrogating its habitation through the peculiar tactics of filmmaking and viewing. By mapping this filmic interiority, we argue for 'non-interior' as a critical and creative way of approaching an interior. Non-interior is not the opposite of interior, nor an in-between position of interior and exterior, yet is concerned with what is unknown, what is excluded, and what is unheeded. It aims to theorise and practise an uncertainty of the interior without assigning a single static definition. The research of a non-interior offers ambiguity, multiplicity, and uncertainty to an interior, allowing us to explore interiority within gradual shades of its materiality as a room, a threshold element, or a piece of furniture.
Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures Conference, 2022
This article, oscillating between subjective and collective making and knowing, explores essayist... more This article, oscillating between subjective and collective making and knowing, explores essayistic filmmaking as a way of critical spatial research. Essayistic making interweaves “the transitional, unauthorised and relatively formless shape of subjectivity” with the curious investigations and active observations of the filmmaker (Alter and Corrigan, 2017). Embodying the characteristics of time-based media and the essayistic form as reflectivity and openness (Rascaroli, 2021), architectural essay film as practice discussed by Haralambidou (2015) enables a reciprocal mode of filmmaking, architectural design and theory research. The paper explores this peculiar mode of essayistic making to multiply and situate critical spatial wanderings through negotiations on two individually produced essay films and proceeds with a third film produced collectively. Placeholder (2022) considers home as void and traces its layered meanings through taking the inventory of personal domestic objects that are circulating between houses lived in at different times, together with the rituals and memories entailed to these objects. Nothing Happens (2022) explores and redefines home from the individual position of the author by investigating the daily routine of working, studying and filming from the kitchen table with references to the prominent attempts of feminist practitioners. The gestures and wanderings of the two films initialise the third one in search of memory, void, rituals, and the mundane at another homely place constructed by the collective spatial imaginations. In Peeling Off (2022) three researchers work collectively to unveil the interstices of the void of Casa Botter, an old dilapidated art nouveau apartment in Istanbul. This research enables the authors to wander around their individual, collective and critical positions simultaneously by discussing, making, viewing, and reflecting; questioning the possibilities of spatial research within the threshold of the essayistic.
Proceedings of eCAADe 2020: Anthropologic- Architecture and Fabrication in the Cognitive Age, 2020
Configuration of spatial setup is a major act in the architectural design process. Configuration ... more Configuration of spatial setup is a major act in the architectural design process. Configuration implies a set of relationships among the spatial elements that can be represented as a network pattern. This kind of spatial network is significant for architectural design as it reveals social implications by mapping interactions between users, indicating functional and latent routes and spatial proximities. This paper concentrates on network thinking in architecture and presents the development of a new software plugin and compares the plugin to similar software studies that allow coding spatial networks and exploring their potentials. The experimental study is also tested by student workshops, explains the motives for the plug-in currently prototyped as a Grasshopper definition and how-it-works.
Proceedings of the 12 th Space Syntax Symposium , 2019
Body, as a whole of senses, can be defined as a receptor due to its inherent features as perceivi... more Body, as a whole of senses, can be defined as a receptor due to its inherent features as perceiving, experiencing and having potentials of behavior. At the same time, body generates and transforms a new type of space within the space it exists. Besides, space is not positioned as a passive element either; it is the equal and active partner of the body that can shrink and expand with bodily effects. Therefore, body and the space in relation cannot be thought separately. They identify each other over and over again. The living body is inevitably garbled with the environment it lives, and it creates its own space. The "tension" between body and space appears as the leading actor of their interrelation. This research is based on an experimental case study that aimed to discover the body-space tension by using syntactic analyzes, which was prepared for an undergraduate course entitled "Architectural Morphology" in Istanbul Technical University, 2017. It differs from the idea that regards space only as a physical shell and aspires to analyze the space that the body identifies and experiences with the senses, by using both cognitive and analytical methods. ITU Faculty of Architecture, Taşkışla Building, was chosen as the field of study. Within this context, the principal questions were the following: What is the possible movement pattern of Taşkışla? / How can this pattern vary with the bodily experience? / What is the meaning of this variation for body-space tension? / How does Space Syntax contribute to analyzing this tension, as a scientific method? / How does bodily experience, cognitive maps and space syntax contribute to each other? As a first step to study, to discover how bodies restructure the space, a performative experience in Taşkışla was recorded. The movements and traces of the performers" bodies were conceptualized as a new type of space which the body created by changing the routine use of their bodies, changing the everyday movement pattern and thinking their bodies as a receptor. Performers investigated the space by their bodies throughout a particular route in the building. The process is followed by externalizing the narratives of the performances as cognitive maps. To be able to search body-space tension, interpreted cognitive maps were compared with the analysis of routine movement by using syntactic tools. Having scientific and visual data on both cases, the properties of the space which are considered as invisible or non-discursive were made debatable. Different results from two separate cases on the same space showed us the substantial effect of body-space interaction. As a result of this study, indicating the dynamic relationship between body and space, it is understood the importance of layering the analysis for perceiving and conceptualizing the space. This multi-layered analyzing process can enhance the bodily way of knowing and syntactic methods, mutually. This research system that provides varied viewpoints can open up new horizons to think on a space.
Conference Presentations by Büşra Balaban
Mekânın Temsil Üzerinden Katlama Yöntemiyle Keşfi: Feriköy Pazar Alanı Örneği, 2020
Bu çalışma; İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi Mimari Tasarım Yüksek Lisans Programı kapsamında Doç. Dr... more Bu çalışma; İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi Mimari Tasarım Yüksek Lisans Programı kapsamında Doç. Dr. Nurbin Paker Kahvecioğlu, Doç. Dr. Aslıhan Şenel, Dr. Özlem Berber, Dr. Bihter Almaç tarafından 2019-2020 güz yarıyılında yürütülen Proje 1 dersi içerisinde “Madde-Form-Anlam/Boş Oda” başlığı altında yapılan araştırmanın bir parçasıdır.
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Papers by Büşra Balaban
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Conference Presentations by Büşra Balaban
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