The Blood on Our Moon: A Celebration of Vessels

Gecekondu, a Turkish improvised housing typology, serves as a poignant case study, embodying the experience of being perceived as a foreigner within one’s own homeland. These self-built homes and their owners face political, socioeconomic, and class divisions that result in feelings of marginalisation and facilitate social injustices.

The author has conducted an aerial study of five regions populated with gecekondus within Istanbul. The study utilises Google Maps aerial and street views to examine the “threshold of detectability,” a concept by Forensic Architecture, where the authority blurs aerial views to try to remove certain representations. It searches for places where political injustice is detectable due to this lack of representation. 

These districts unanimously show gentrification through studies of different dates in street view and the remnant ruins. The clusters of gecekondu zones have inaccurate aerial views through the erasure of certain building structures and straightening the roads to hide distinct road forms resulting from the organic growth of gecekondu zones. Mosques, which are commissioned by the rich to be built to secure a place in “paradise,” are often in the central part of these zones with a stern bordering fence around them. The minaret is visible from gecekondu that are quite afar as well. In Küçükçekmece, some street views prohibit access to points adjacent to certain gecekondus. Gaziosmanpaşa had graffiti temporarily in 2018 that read: “Living is a form of hope. What would happen if there were people who loved us as well?" Güngören is a heavily industrialised zone where gentrification interestingly includes social housing apartments that were built in place of gecekondus for the gecekondu people to move in. Bahçelievler depicts how found objects such as doors could be reimagined to host their own needs, such as fences for privatisation relaplacing the sense of community that was built by having clusters of gecekondu. Ümraniye depicts the importance of community through shared zones and market spaces.

Stereotypical misconceptions and the representation in Turkish media of the gecekondu as "the other" undermine the experience of homeliness. They don’t tell the story of the thick, beautifully patterned carpets creating or indicating potential passageways within the house. They don’t mention our childhood stories of rolling on the ground, wrapping ourselves with our parents’ adorned curtains, sipping cay (turkish tea) while lazily slouching on the pillows that stench of cigarettes. According to Mary-Ann Ray, "gecekondu is a fluid, moving, and changing entity where on the interior, the goods of life are exhibited as the fragments of life people treasure." 

Through several series of both remote and in-person studies, Gecekondu are examined as examples of extraordinary diasporic resilience; a diasporic sense of home prevails within the Gecekondu through the constant translation happening to express the notion of home and the dweller’s identity. The relationships between domestic functional objects and space are examined; these objects become vessels into which notions of timeliness and identity are projected and become central architectural elements under domestic conditions in which conventional architectural elements are uncertain.

Through several series of both remote and in-person studies, Gecekondu are examined as examples of extraordinary diasporic resilience; a diasporic sense of home prevails within the Gecekondu through the constant translation happening to express the notion of home and the dweller’s identity. The relationships between domestic functional objects and space are examined; these objects become vessels into which notions of timeliness and identity are projected and become central architectural elements under domestic conditions in which conventional architectural elements are uncertain.

The drawings are one way of demonstrating how the research might be applied to architectural design. It is how we can design a home that are inspired by the vessels and host these vessels.

I wanted to imagine an architecture on an imagined site, a site in my dreams where the notions of home from different homes I lived in linger and become a representation of my identity. The site is The Dreamer’s Grounding. Pixelation can be a sign of authority and violence, as Forensic Architecture has disclosed by studying the places vulnerable to violence.. The uncertainty, or the blurring from the public also can be used as a space for viewers, occupants and the makers to create, defining spaces through the lens of the diaspora. The main agenda of the site is to define the factors that signify the muffled voices of the diaspora as “found objects,” translating these factors into a place where a positive outcome can be generated. 

These vessels are drawn into the ambiguous site, letting the viewer and the maker imagine and dream of where the built architecture would be according to the placement and the usage of these vessels accordingly. The CAD drawings of these vessels that have been generated post the production of the vessels is an example of how we can create a conventional architecture for the diasporic communities. It is a translation from a personal, “informal” or “unconventional” architectural form to a more conventional architectural study.

The thesis is a celebration of the resilience of marginalised communities; the homes of these communities are not a physical structure but a symbol of enduring spirit whose notions of home are in constant translation as their cultural identities amalgamate with their lived experiences.