ASLIHAN DEMİRTAŞ

Aslihan Demirtas is an architect and the principal of the interdisciplinary studio Aslihan Demirtas Design & Research Office, based in New York and Istanbul. Her practice purposefully crosses territories and boundaries of disciplines in the forms of building, landscape and installation projects, exhibitions, art projects, as well as research.

Demirtas holds an MS in architectural studies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a BArch from the Middle East Technical University, Turkey. After completing her graduate degree at  MIT, she collaborated with I.M. Pei as the lead project designer for the Museum of Islamic Arts in Doha, Qatar and the Miho Chapel in Japan.

Her publications include a chapter in the book Landscapes of Development: The Impact of Modernization Discourses on the Physical Environment of the Eastern Mediterranean (Harvard University Press, 2013); Infrastructure: Water issue of Betonart journal which she guest-edited in 2013,  as well as chapters in Anytime (MIT Press), In-Transit (Verlag der Bauhaus), Thresholds (MIT), and WORK (Parsons). Her architectural practice was featured as a Profile Dossier in the 341st issue of Arredamento Architecture Magazine. Her work has been exhibited at SALT, Istanbul and Ankara; Pratt Manhattan Gallery; the Aronson Gallery; and NTHCCC, in New York.

Demirtaş has taught at Parsons at the New School, Bilgi and Kahir Has Universities and has lectured at Harvard Graduate School of Design, MIT, The Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and American University in Beirut. She was among the founders of the Kadir Has University Urban and Architectural Studies Master’s Program.

She is the recipient of the Graham Foundation Grant for her book Graft to be published by SALT. Demirtaş acted as technical reviewer for the Aga Khan Architecture Awards, 15th cycle.

She is an active member of the Initiative for the Protection of the Historical Yedikule Urban Gardens and a founding star of ANATOPIA Cooperative.

aslihan-demirtas.com

BİLGE BAL

An architect-educator and spatial researcher based in Istanbul.

She completed her undergraduate degree at ITU Architecture (2nd in the Department and Faculty), her master’s degree at Istanbul Bilgi University in Architectural Design (1st in the Institute with a 100% Merit Scholarship) under the directorship of Prof. Dr. İhsan Bilgin, and her PhD at ITU in Architectural Design with a thesis titled “Drawing the Line: About Architectural Drawing.”

Her actions are open to collaborative and antidisciplinary practices. In manifold scales, she is interested in low-tech crafts making, praising the hand, unfolding the value for tradition and the process of making, and colliding them with the allusions of designer logic. Her intellectual and collective architectural research and associated works are in solidarity with analogue, slow-making practices. She searches for walking, drawing, writing, and other corporal forms of making as a way of being open up to the world, and touching things performatively and peacefully. She uses these methods to organize collective and critical processes and invite collaborative thinking. Her work consists of a series of poetic and creative experiences, experiments, and trials that are ethical and curative. Amongst them, she concentrates on drawing.

Since 2012, she has been a full-time faculty member and visiting lecturer, creating studios that open her research to collective experience and broaden its scope, organizing various other courses. She designs open talks and workshop series, organizes nomadic exhibitions, and has editorial roles across multiple magazine issues, jury memberships, invited presentations, and drawing workshop leadership roles related to her research. Since 2007, she has been a member of the Assos excavation team, participating in archaeological excavation studies. In 2021, she was selected for the GEMMS / Young Architecture Selection and Exhibition, celebrating the diversity of architectural practices as one of the under-forty young creatives. She is the editor of the books entitled “Continental Capitals: Paris, Berlin” (co-edited with İhsan Bilgin, Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Yayınları, 2016) and “Muhafaza/Mimarlık” (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2019). She is one of the writers of the book entitled “Arzu Mimarlığı: Mimarlığı Düşünmek ve Düşlemek” (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2012). She co-curated the Italo Calvino 100+1 Years Old! exhibition on the architecture of otherness at Kıraathane: Istanbul Literature House.

Since 2017, she has been writing for Manifold and, with her curiosity for situated drawing practices, has been designing and curating the activities of Dirty Drawings, an independent academic sharing platform she founded in 2021. In 2024, she runs the workshops for campus meetings organized by AURA Istanbul at universities in Anatolia. She is working on establishing a “Drawing Center” in Istanbul, focusing on the various states of lines.

bilgebal.com