Mai Okimoto’s “Where Sidewalks Never End” — a piece that takes you on a peaceful walk through São Paulo’s República neighbourhood. Reading it somehow led me to wander inside an Ottoman miniature, where spaces blur and even time flows differently.

Some parks seem not designed for lingering peacefully among trees, but rather to stand before them in silent reverence. Uğur Tanyeli described such parks as spaces not meant to be lived in, but to be revered — where every path is exact, every tree aligned, transforming nature into monuments to admire from afar. This is most evident in French formal gardens like those at Versailles, where order and symmetry reign supreme, nature tamed and confined. Yet, not all landscapes seek this control. At Antwerp’s Falconplein, trees lean at angles, embracing irregularity and the winds themselves, offering a quieter, more human whisper instead of a commanding presence. After visiting such places, it’s easier to breathe where nature still allows a touch of wildness.

For structural stability, old structures' masonry walls are fastened with iron tie rods. Because, despite the load-bearing nature of the facade in these structures, it lacks a robust structural connection with the rest of the building, which can lead to failure of these walls. A peculiar challenge often found in these old buildings lies in the arrangement of floor and roof joists that run parallel to the front and rear facades, interconnecting with party walls shared between buildings.

In a small country like Belgium, dry land is needed more than wet. In order to have more dry land, they reshaped their landscape and oriented water through canals. These new dry lands have become built-up areas. And these built-up areas turned this small country into a densely populated one. As a result, the soil’s existing ability to retain and infiltrate water is lost.

What defines buildings as unbuildable? I have been working as an architect for a few years now and lately I have often asked myself this question. What defines buildings as unbuildable?

I am in grief and I don’t know where to put all the pieces of myself. I was deeply saddened over the past weeks by the earthquake in Turkey and I still am. I have been trying to gather my thoughts on this and I still can’t find the right words to express myself. I am sad and angry.

Architecture is a craftmanship. Relationship between master and apprentice shapes the future of the profession. You need to be curious enough to observe your master.¹ It wouldn’t be comprehensive to reduce the meaning of master to a person. It can mean any inspirations in your life.

At a certain moment in my life, I have realized that walking is the moment that I observe my surrounding. During my walks in Ankara (my hometown), I am always intrigued by ‘Kahvehane (Coffee House)’. If you observe these spaces, you can feel joy but also sadness that are embedded in them. I still remember how people were interacting with each other in Kahvehane. Interaction was emerging as a form of conversation or intense discussion. When I look back now, I can say that my desire to write about this space emerged that day, during those walks in the neighbourhood… I believe, we need to embrace these peculiar moments as architects. Now, I sit back and try to grasp that moment and that curiosity, which have led me to envisage Kahvehane disconnected from its roots.

I believe that architecture is a loop. In the practise of architecture, one may find him/herself at the point that he/she started. By going through this process, one may prove the existince of the loop to him/herself.

Every starting point is a final point.

Or every final point is a new starting point.

Loop creates opportunities as well. Every new point that we define during our architectural process might be a beginning of another loop. Obviously, it would not be a comprehensive approach to restrict architecture to this simple state of linked loops rather we should embrace the productivity and the potentiality that the loop creates.

Phase I _ Awareness
I have realised that architecture has become easily consumable.

Humanity has made enormous developments. As we progress into a technological century, we are confronted with the repercussions. Through dissemination of architectural knowledge and with social media, architecture has become easily consumable. Our ability to consume and digest new architecture has changed the components of inquiry process as well as space and time intimacy. The reduction in the time frame of procurement, resulted in increased gap between thinking process and architecture.