EMERGENT REPRESENTATIONS: ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING AS A GENERATIVE TOOL FOR AKPINAR STREAM

Date

2026-9-03

Author

Kaplan, Mehmet

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Architectural design increasingly engages conditions whose complexity exceeds the capacities of established representational conventions. This thesis investigates a particular representational practice developed within the pedagogy of the Section 2 Graduation Year Studios at METU Department of Architecture. Within this pedagogy, representational techniques initially used to understand the “deep ground” of the context and visualize the “complex data” gathered through research gradually become instruments of design itself. Across different research-based studio projects, representational forms that could not be fully explained through familiar categories of architectural representation are produced. This study proposes the term “emergent representations” to name these forms. It first examines the conditions that give them their particular character, and then turns to the design processes from which they emerge. The interdisciplinary research-by-design studio “Akpınar-by-Design” allows this framework to be observed in action. The project addresses the rehabilitation of Akpınar, an ephemeral stream in Urla whose seasonal presence and absence intersect with archaeological traces, changing social and industrial functions, and urban and infrastructural interventions. This complexity made Akpınar difficult to represent as a design subject. Different bodies of knowledge introduced by the interdisciplinary team altered both the understanding of the stream and the ways of navigating within it. A heterogeneous body of material emerged, with section drawings occupying a central position in reading and transforming Akpınar and Urla. Ultimately, “Akpınar in a Valise” emerged as a representational form that brought these materials together within a single container while preserving their individual structures and the relationships established among them.

Subject Keywords

Architectural Representation, Emergent Representation, Situated Design Practice, Research-by-Design, Contextual Complexity

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/121031

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Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis