Shortlisted Proposal for Pavilion of Turkey for the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, 2020
INTENSIVE CARE COLLECTIVE:  Aslıhan Demirtaş, Bilge Kalfa Doğan, Gözde Şarlak-Kramer, Evren Uzer

[Intensive] Care exhibition tackles our world’s current climate, economic and political emergency conditions and proposes a care-based framework applied to architecture and spatial practice as a response to the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia’s central theme. The exhibition seeks care (full) architectural and spatial practice, its components and potential for fostering new relations, networks, and power of changing our world and ways of living in. ICC brings the concept of care2 to the center of essential questions that are transforming us, practitioners, educators, towards a collective spatial practice that operates within the framework of care:  

How architectural design and practice contribute to the moment of crisis, and what kind of changes are needed from architecture to contribute to the reversal of it?
How and what can we learn from care practices in the context of the architecture and spatial design? 
If we exist in an interwoven web of life which we call our world, where and how can we discuss and contemplate together about care?  

[Intensive] Care exhibition weaves answers to these and other questions as digital and analog components, both figuratively and metaphorically. The exhibition is conceived as a spatial warp; recycled threads replicated the volume of the space. By encapsulating the area, this warp will reconfigure the internal space of the Sale D’Armi as a careful, light, and tactile space. The threads are dyed with madder, an ancient dyestuff that is processed from the roots of Rubia cordifolia plants and is commonly used in Anatolia for centuries. The spatial warp has two overlapping purposes. First, it delineates the offset–the vertical threaded area, which we define as the amount of wilderness or untouched earth necessary to reserve, to set aside for any human intervention. Second, it is the supporting structure for collective thinking and making. 

The elements which constitute the necessary tension to hold the warp together are ‘things’ of kinship and their connections. These objects will be collected concerning the spatial practices that incorporate care framework, and collectives, initiatives, and solidarity networks. The loom consists of a digital interactive content that accommodates the database of care(full) design that has been developed during the pre- biennial programming. It deciphers a set of social and spatial practices within the context of care in Turkey. Additionally, the loom can turn into a long table where formats such as discursive dinners, working sessions, and conversations will be hosted. These hybrid interfaces will be open to the users to add on, engage with, and respond during the exhibition. 

Intensive Care Collective was formed on the occasion of the Venice Architecture Biennial 2020’s call: ‘How will we live together?’. [Intensive ] Care Exhibition is the first work that ICC is curating together, and first collectively led the proposal for the National Pavilion of Turkey since its inception. ICC curatorial team created a care circle -individual and institutional collaborators-  to produce content for and join in the conversation towards a care-based framework for spatial practice and education. The wider team, community organizations, practitioners, craftspeople, scholars coming from all disciplines that make architecture possible. ICC envisions a production process that will accumulate into a collective imaginary for a framework and roadmap for an architecture genuinely inclusive, sustainable, and as visionary as its tools.