On July 4, the Department of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture (LAUD) held an international charrette on the topic of “Sustainable Urban Transformation: Future Scenarios and Design Policies.” For this day-long meeting and workshop, LAUD hosted guest speakers from the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, the World Bank and international architectural firms in Norway.
The opening speech was given by Vedad Gürgen (director general, General Directorate of Infrastructure and Urban Transformation Services, Ministry of Environment and Urbanization), who in his remarks delineated the major problems and challenges involved in the transformation of Turkey’s cities.
The first session, chaired by Asst. Prof. Işın Çelebi (former minister of state), focused on sustainability issues with specific reference to urban transformation in Turkey. Stephen Karam (leader of the World Bank’s Sustainable Development Program in Turkey) and Dr. Ebru Alarslan (urban risk expert and project coordinator, General Directorate of Infrastructure and Urban Transformation Services) discussed government policies, consultative processes and modes of implementation.
In the second session, which was chaired by Ali Özer (Özer/Ürger Architects), Nicolai Riise (MAD Arkitekter, Oslo) and Oystein Grönning (Migrant AS Architecture+Urbanism, Oslo) looked at sustainable development from the urban perspective, using the theme “Mad About Sustainability.”
These two sessions were followed by the workshop portion of the event. Titled “Sustainability Charrette: Towards the Beginning” and coordinated by Dr. Kumru Arapgirlioğlu (LAUD), it consisted of three concurrent roundtable discussions, focused on three major pillars of sustainability: environment, economy and culture. The charrette ended with a roundup, in which the notes of each group were shared.