Introduction: Turkey has a history of various natural disasters. In architecture education, students need to be informed about natural disasters, produce information, and use the knowledge in their designs to play an essential role in shaping the built environment. The disaster awarenesseducation center and park aim to raise awareness and educate all segments of society about natural disasters and create practical solutions when necessary. Objectives: The research aims to systematically examine urban landscape design solutions to raise awareness of the architectural students about disasters through an exemplary disaster awareness park in Istanbul. The proposed landscapes are classified concerning disaster awareness level, education and training capacity and the potential to serve as a post-disaster meeting point and temporary management center. Methods: This research presents an architectural design process. The research uses landscape planning and design principles to evaluate student projects concerning the relationship between indoor spaces and disaster awareness and education parks in open areas. Results: Architecture graduate students have been successful in building outdoor-indoor connections, multi-purpose use of outdoor spaces, designing open space services, and solving services and meeting areas through their projects. However, their designs did not address planting, ecological and sustainable green space, and emergency water use.

In today's world, cities are developing and expanding rapidly. One of the critical factors of this growth is migration from rural areas to cities. As migration to the urban areas increases, the city needs to grow its resources to be sufficient. According to the 2019 statements made by TUIK (Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu), the city that received the most immigration in Turkey was Istanbul with a rate of 42.5%. Urban agriculture is enhancing the capacity of urban resilience. This study aims to examine the concept of urban agriculture in the context of sustainability and examine practical examples especially from Ataköy, Bakırköy in a comparable style. Idle industrial areas or vacant lots and urban agriculture potentials are examined based on the R-URBAN strategy through methodologies of literature review and feasibility and field studies that carried out in Ataköy. A scenario produced and an implementation model has been developed for Ataköy in the context of urban agriculture at the basis of R-URBAN strategy.

Extreme weather events, sea level rise and intensified tsunamis as causes of climate change are becoming major threats for coastal cities. Istanbul, one of the most populated built-up coastal cities in the world, is prone to urban, coastal, and riverine flooding according to studies. Spatial design measurements preparing the urban waterfronts for the consequences of hazardous flooding are adopted in several cities as part of their urban resilience strategies. This paper focuses on physical measurements to adapt Istanbul to the effects of coastal flooding that is neglected so far in urban agenda. In this regard, the paper aims to develop site specific spatial design proposals as possible measurements to increase Istanbul’s waterfronts capacity for an effective flood resilience approach in case of storm events and tsunami intensified through climate change. To achieve this, status analysis and spatial configuration of possible design measures for Istanbul waterfront in a representative study area at neighborhood scale are introduced. To answer how much the waterfronts are at risk and how spatially adaptive strategies can be implemented in the current situation following flood resilience approach, site specific spatial analysis and a strategic design framework are developed. Since a comprehensive district-based guideline for spatial adaptation is currently not embedded in the urban agenda of flood management in Istanbul, this study promotes preparation of multiple guidelines adopting contemporary design measures in flood management for the entire city’s waterfronts by proposing one for Kadiköy.

We would like to welcome you to “Landscape Research” special issue of the Journal of Design Studio.

The landscapes and the memory of the landscapes are evolving with natural and human-centered activities. In some places, landscapes continue to reveal their memory ecologically, socially, and culturally. On the other hand, in some places, landscapes lose their ecologic and socio-cultural archive as a result of globalization. This issue causes to emerge fragile landscapes according to lack of water resources, global warming, a decrease in biodiversity. Preserving the memory of landscapes and using it in the practice of landscape is a deeply crucial issue. The paper tries to answer two questions: How can landscape memory be used in design education? How can a research-based design studio pedagogy be conducted on this approach? This paper focuses on the research-based design approach in landscape architecture education to decode and recode the memory of the landscapes in the design process. ITU Landscape Architecture Department 2019-2020 Fall Semester Landscape Design Studio I-II, which is the case study of the research, worked in Savur, Mardin. The study area provides unexpected landscape carpet including browns and greens together in the valleys of the region that have a rich social and ecological structure. The methodological process of the studio was based on the three approaches which are integrated into each other: The Landscape Memory Model, Action-based Design Studio, and Research-based Design Studio. The model provides a guide for reading the memory of the landscape with various memory codes hidden under the visible and invisible values of it. This core process is used by the students for understanding the cultural and ecological values of the study area and implementing them into the design process. The action-based studio approach allows the tutors to find the problematic points in the design process of each student and resolve them in a positive way. Covering these two approaches, the research-based design studio expresses the discovery of the knowledge through a strong research process. The results are as followed: Implementing a research-based process ensured a place-based and innovative perspective to shape a design concept. Using the pre-specified landscape memory model empowered the research phase and helped students to analyze and discern the place with their own perceptions. Action-based flow allowed the instructors to leave the conventional studio performing and helped to use in-situ (special to the studio) instructing techniques within the semester. This paper may be influential for especially landscape design studios and relocate conventional studio approaches with more flexible and progressive techniques to understand the place and beyond.

Water is the source of life for our planet, guided the ancient civilizations, and formed its current footprint on the earth. Water has always been a crucial element of our biological survival; consequently, humankind has permanently settled around it while carrying the responsibility of protecting it. To understand the water pattern in various cities throughout history and analyze how the emerging problems were overcome, Istanbul Technical University Landscape Architecture Department Graduate Level Design Studio was held under the theme of "Around Water". Despite the adverse effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on education, international researchers contribute to the studio in a beneficial and diversified manner with the effective use of online tools. As a result of the literature review and the online, multidisciplinary education, and research-based design requirements, a new studio method was developed. Water-based case studies worldwide produced enriched outputs. While creating new discussion environments, the diversified outcomes of the studio "Around Water" contributed to the creation of cumulative studio knowledge.

Interdisciplinary approaches and distinctive representation methods are needed to expand the range of meaning in the architecture and to consider the design process in unique frameworks. Literature disrupts the static images produced for the city in the context of the imaginative weight and the various dynamics it makes with the reader also uses the city, space, and architecture to create a different dimension of representation. This situation, which is inspected in the article regarding the relationship between literature, city, and architecture, will be examined through the "Laughable Places" workshop, that is part of the e-workshop days held at Gebze Technical University in February 2021. In this sense, firstly the relationship between literature and architecture and the revealing of their potentials are handled through the imaginative, representational and textual dimensions. Than through various workshops where the relationship between fictional narrative and architecture is applied, it is reviewed in which contexts fictional narrative can be included in the intellectual process of design. This review has been grouped according to the method in the workshop setups, using the fictional narrative based on literary works or the writing fictional narratives by participants. The workshop process was interpreted through the hybridity of the two approaches.

As well as a design process, experimental practices in architectural education are associated with the analytical approaches of visual thinking and visual reasoning. The main purpose of this study was to explore creative methods for devising a vertical construction through visual reasoning. In terms of experimental practices, design research is based on exploration while the primary research area in architecture is reframed by constantly renewed approaches. Accordingly, the hypothesis of this study was that creative methods would improve when the creation of a vertical construction in architectural education is nourished by visual stimuli. The study searched for a construction that plasticized the vertical spatiality of Sivas Grand Mosque’s minaret. The method was shaped by a prerequisite dialogue that rests on visual stimuli. The expected outcome of this dialogue was that the minaret as a pure form would be subjected to an abstraction and, a design proposal then developed for its current structural problems. The results indicated a two-fold appreciation of design. First, when the minaret was maintained within the idea of stabilization rather than being construed as a pure form, the search for a creative method of vertical construction was handled in the context of static preservation. Second, when Sivas Grand Mosque’s minaret as an imaginary design tool was construed as a pure form and the abstraction level increased through visual reasoning, the outcomes gradually demonstrated an approach akin to experimental practices

This article focuses on the effects of the decreased ability to perceive touch in distance learning for all of the actors in architectural design studios during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. As part of face-to-face architectural pedagogy, the tactile experience of architectural materials, models, and corporeality in the studio environment assumes great importance. However, in contrast, these aspects are diminished when it comes to digital education, generating new topics for discussion. This article asks how and to what extent distance education models can affect the process of learning, understanding, discussing, and designing architecture, amidst the prospect of continuous digital education in the post-pandemic period. Hence, it examines the awareness and experiences of haptic perception of first-year students at the Istanbul Aydın University Department of Architecture through in-depth interviews recorded on Zoom. Between 2020 and 2021, the interviews investigated haptic perception, observed construction techniques, factors affecting design materials, the way and place in which materials were perceived, the methods of sharing and transferring designs with studio instructors, questions about the obstacles encountered, and expectations for the post-pandemic period. The outcomes of these in-depth interviews showed that there is a close relationship between the students’ bodily interests and their awareness with regards to perceiving materials and that the former indicated a tendency towards making models. It was observed that students had preferred digital design tools in the pre-pandemic period, and in addition to the digital tools that students often use as a design approach, they negotiated as designing through hand-drawing in order to gain the “thinking with one’s hands” experience in this study. This emphasizes the need for haptic experiences in an architectural educational environment.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the application of a theoretical framework in the architecture thesis project to discover the effectiveness of the exercise on the thesis projects. It was common to observe that the students prepared the architectural thesis project with limited, unstructured, or disconnected studies to analysis, programming, and conceptualization phases. A theoretical framework model was tested to evaluate the effects on the learning outcomes of the students. The methodology of the research was designed based on structured observation and content analysis. The findings of the research reveal that the students perceive and understand the studies and the theoretical framework differently. The students demonstrated their theoretical framework with four categorical specifications including information, application, presentation, and communication. The information referred to data and structure of the organization, the application implied the relation between the data collection, analysis and other phases of the thesis project, the presentation illustrated how they applied graphical tools to illustrate the data, and communication revealed the interaction between the students and the panel of juries and participants. In conclusion, the theoretical framework connects the studies to the concept generation and opens a new door for the discussion of the architectural studies and lessons learnt between the panel of juries, the students, and peers. For an effective expectation from the theoretical framework outputs, detailed guidelines could harmonize the students’ outputs due to the varieties of the application, interpretation, and demonstration of the architectural theoretical frameworks.