Buildings anchor memories, but buildings do not last forever. The solidity of the structure and materials does not always guarantee a building’s permanence. As Karl Marx once said, “ALL THAT IS SOLID melts into air.”

The approach was to study the history of the area around Istanbul Modern and to borrow and reassemble forms from earlier structures, showing the ephemeral side of architecture. Influenced by the region’s industrial history, ALL THAT IS SOLID is constructed with oxidized metals. The design borrows geometries from buildings of the past and crunches them together in a chaotic way. However, this chaos starts to make sense over the course of a day as these geometries become visible. Light-responsive shades open when it is cool and close when it is hot, revealing that they are printed with images. ALL THAT IS SOLID is not only a reminder of the past but also a statement about the imminent changes the future holds.

Project: PATTU (Cem Kozar, Işıl Ünal)
Team: Ilgın Külekçi, Hürcan Emre Yılmazer, Lysann Gahmig
Programming: Filika Tasarım (Selçuk Artut, Alp Tuğan)
Engineering and R&D: Metal Yapı (Bülent Özgül, Selami Gürel, Aylin Özgül, Bülent Kahraman, Esra Sümer Eke, Kemal Gürsoy, Yusuf Burak Baliç)
Special Thanks to: Erdal Akkaş, Sevince Bayrak, Funda Cinoğlu, Dilan Çelik, Vassilis Danellis, Oral Göktaş, Fatih Küçükçolak, Zeynep Ögel, Ulya Soley, Harun Ünal, Ömer Talha Yağcı