Conversation:
The History of Wetness in Beyoğlu and Its Surroundings
K. Mehmet Kentel ve Merve Bedir
Salt Beyoğlu, Online
March 7, 2025 17.00
Mühendishane-i Hümayun, Istanbul Map, 1845
The Rare Books Collection at Istanbul University
The Rare Books Collection at Istanbul University
Urban historian K. Mehmet Kentel will join architect and researcher Merve Bedir for a conversation focusing on the waters running under Beyoğlu. During the discussion, they will explore the following questions:
“What does the historical waterscape of the notoriously dry Beyoğlu reveal? What can tracing the waters flowing beneath and above the streets—traversed daily by thousands of people and vehicles—tell us about the socio-ecological relationships that shaped the urban development of modern Beyoğlu? How can we re-map the northwestern peripheries of Istanbul, the Kasımpaşa valley, and the Tatavla hills through their shared histories of wetness?”
This conversation is organized as part of the first workshop of “Wetness“—one of the five research strands in Water Assemblies—focusing on the water systems of the Salt Beyoğlu building. The program will be held in Turkish. Please register here for online participation. No registration is required for in-person attendance at Salt Beyoğlu.
“Wetness” research is realized with the support of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
K. Mehmet Kentel is a lecturer in the Department of History at Leiden University. He co-curated the exhibition On the Spot: Panoramic Gaze on Istanbul, a History and co-edited the accompanying publication (Pera Museum, 2023), together with Çiğdem Kafescioğlu and M. Baha Tanman. He also curated the exhibition Memories of Humankind: Stories from the Ottoman Manuscripts at the Istanbul Research Institute in 2019 and served as a consultant and scriptwriter for The Characters of Yusuf Franko: An Ottoman Bureaucrat’s Caricatures at Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) in 2017. His articles have been published in journals such as Muqarnas and Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, as well as in various edited volumes. Kentel is the editor of YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies and is currently working on a book about the construction of infrastructure and the environment in 19th-century Istanbul.
Merve Bedir is an architect and researcher whose work focuses on infrastructures of hospitality and mobility, as well as collective intelligence and imaginaries of landscapes. She is a co-initiating member of Aformal Academy in Pearl River Delta, Kitchen Workshop in Gaziantep, and Center for Spatial Justice in Istanbul. Bedir earned her PhD from Delft University of Technology and her Bachelor of Architecture from Middle East Technical University. She was an assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at Hong Kong University, where she worked with wetlands, and Design Academy Eindhoven, where she focused on dunes. She co-chaired the “Design for Partnerships for Change” panel at the UIA World Congress of Architects in 2023. She authored “Kitchen Workshop: Cityzenship as Infrastructure” in Feminist Infrastructural Critique (2024) and co-edited “New Silk Roads” in e-flux Architecture (2024). Currently, she is a visiting professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) School of Architecture. Her recent design projects include MutfakNa, an industrial non-profit kitchen in Gaziantep, and the Postane repair project in Istanbul. She has curated Vocabulary of Hospitality (Istanbul and Rotterdam, 2015 and 2022), uncommon river (Plovdiv, 2015), and co-curated Automated Landscapes (2017-2019). Her work has been featured in BAK (Utrecht, 2025 and 2023), Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (New York, 2023), Venice Biennale of Architecture (2021), Architecture Biennale of São Paulo (2017), and several editions of Istanbul Design Biennial and Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture in Shenzhen.
“What does the historical waterscape of the notoriously dry Beyoğlu reveal? What can tracing the waters flowing beneath and above the streets—traversed daily by thousands of people and vehicles—tell us about the socio-ecological relationships that shaped the urban development of modern Beyoğlu? How can we re-map the northwestern peripheries of Istanbul, the Kasımpaşa valley, and the Tatavla hills through their shared histories of wetness?”
This conversation is organized as part of the first workshop of “Wetness“—one of the five research strands in Water Assemblies—focusing on the water systems of the Salt Beyoğlu building. The program will be held in Turkish. Please register here for online participation. No registration is required for in-person attendance at Salt Beyoğlu.
“Wetness” research is realized with the support of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
K. Mehmet Kentel is a lecturer in the Department of History at Leiden University. He co-curated the exhibition On the Spot: Panoramic Gaze on Istanbul, a History and co-edited the accompanying publication (Pera Museum, 2023), together with Çiğdem Kafescioğlu and M. Baha Tanman. He also curated the exhibition Memories of Humankind: Stories from the Ottoman Manuscripts at the Istanbul Research Institute in 2019 and served as a consultant and scriptwriter for The Characters of Yusuf Franko: An Ottoman Bureaucrat’s Caricatures at Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) in 2017. His articles have been published in journals such as Muqarnas and Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, as well as in various edited volumes. Kentel is the editor of YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies and is currently working on a book about the construction of infrastructure and the environment in 19th-century Istanbul.
Merve Bedir is an architect and researcher whose work focuses on infrastructures of hospitality and mobility, as well as collective intelligence and imaginaries of landscapes. She is a co-initiating member of Aformal Academy in Pearl River Delta, Kitchen Workshop in Gaziantep, and Center for Spatial Justice in Istanbul. Bedir earned her PhD from Delft University of Technology and her Bachelor of Architecture from Middle East Technical University. She was an assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at Hong Kong University, where she worked with wetlands, and Design Academy Eindhoven, where she focused on dunes. She co-chaired the “Design for Partnerships for Change” panel at the UIA World Congress of Architects in 2023. She authored “Kitchen Workshop: Cityzenship as Infrastructure” in Feminist Infrastructural Critique (2024) and co-edited “New Silk Roads” in e-flux Architecture (2024). Currently, she is a visiting professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) School of Architecture. Her recent design projects include MutfakNa, an industrial non-profit kitchen in Gaziantep, and the Postane repair project in Istanbul. She has curated Vocabulary of Hospitality (Istanbul and Rotterdam, 2015 and 2022), uncommon river (Plovdiv, 2015), and co-curated Automated Landscapes (2017-2019). Her work has been featured in BAK (Utrecht, 2025 and 2023), Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (New York, 2023), Venice Biennale of Architecture (2021), Architecture Biennale of São Paulo (2017), and several editions of Istanbul Design Biennial and Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture in Shenzhen.
