Kitchen Meetings:
Collective Making and Community Building in Spatial Practices

Kitchen

“Kitchen Meetings” continues with its second session, exploring community-based spatial practices centered on processes embedded in solidarity and the building of (inter)connections. Drawing on different approaches to collective making and community building, the program features İdil Bayar (Herkes için Mimarlık/Architecture for All), Emilio da Cruz Brandão (Chalmers School of Architecture), Safa Merve Sönmez (Taşkışla Resistance), and Ali Cem Doğan (Darağaç Collective).

This gathering will explore the reciprocal relationships between community building, participatory engagement, and collaborative production. It will trace a continuum from practices grounded in designing and building together with communities to creating collective spaces that facilitate shared making, learning, and living, and further toward thinking, acting, and organizing collectively in response to today’s complex spatial and social challenges and rights violations. Participants will also reflect on how working with and building solidarity among local communities and grassroots organizations shapes practitioners’ own experiences and understandings of being part of a “community.” Bringing together practitioners from Gothenburg, Istanbul, and İzmir, the program will present examples of practice and discuss the possibilities and limitations of community-based spatial practices and pedagogy. It will also foster a discussion on how the gap between academic theory and training and grassroots practice can be bridged.

Emilio da Cruz Brandão will present the design studios of the Architecture and Planning Beyond Sustainability Master’s Program at the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, where he has served as an artistic lecturer in Design Activism since 2013. He will discuss the program’s work in Hammarkullen—a Gothenburg suburb developed under Sweden’s “Million Homes Program” and now marked by external stigmatization and socio-economic marginalization, particularly affecting migrant communities—focusing on participatory research and collaboration with local residents. İdil Bayar will present the practice of Herkes için Mimarlık [Architecture for All], formed around the principle of “making together” to design, build, and research in collaboration with communities. She will address how the association, through more than fifteen years of diverse partnerships, has seen its forms of collective practice evolve over time. Melda Uyar and Zeynep Deniz Şahin will share the story of Taşkışla Resistance, a collective formed by students of Istanbul Technical University’s Faculty of Architecture at the Taşkışla Campus during the student movement of March 2025, to organize an academic boycott. Drawing on the initiative’s efforts to foster critical and creative perspectives on architecture, architectural education, right to the city, food sovereignty, and faculty issues, they will share their experiences across different contexts—from architecture studios to the Taşkışla Devrim Garden and wider solidarity networks—through a practice of “being and making together.” Ali Cem Doğan from Darağaç—a collective in İzmir’s Umurbey neighborhood that produces experimental and transformative projects at the intersection of art, design, and social issues—will share how artists, designers, and local residents come together through its activities. Reflecting on the collective’s ten-year trajectory of events, exhibitions, and publications, he will also talk about the Darağaç Kitchen project, which transformed an abandoned building in the neighborhood into a public kitchen fostering social interaction, learning, and shared experiences.

The gathering will begin with the collective preparation of vegetarian snacks using ingredients sourced from Campus Gardens and the Beyoğlu Food Collective. The food will be shared during the presentations, followed by a discussion. The presentations and discussion will be held in English and are open to everyone, while participation in the food preparation workshop is limited to 20 people. Click here to register.

PROGRAM

15.00 Collective Food Preparation
16.00 Presentations
17.00 Discussion

“Kitchen Meetings” is presented as part of Practice Matters, a long-term project exploring design, craft, architecture, and spatial practices and their ability to respond to urgent issues of conflict and crisis. The project is developed in collaboration between IASPIS and Salt and is programmed by Magnus Ericson and Eylül Şenses.

İdil Bayar is an architect, researcher, and board member of Herkes için Mimarlık [Architecture for All] (HiM). For nearly a decade, she has been engaged in collective production processes, participatory design workshops, and community-based field studies across various scales. Her work with HiM—spanning activist forms of architecture, solidarity practices, and non-hierarchical design applications—has shaped her academic research. In 2025, she completed her MSc with the thesis “Forms of Solidarity in Neighborhood: Implicit Activism Practices in Third Places.” Her research interests encompass the commons, collective action, and urban anthropology, with a particular focus on spatial ethnography, autoethnographic methodologies, and collective pedagogical practices. She is currently working at the Istanbul Planning Agency, where she serves as a Senior Associate.

Emilio da Cruz Brandão is an architect, urbanist, and researcher based in Gothenburg. He has been serving as director of the Architecture and Planning Beyond Sustainability Master’s Program at Chalmers University of Technology. His research and teaching focus on urban pedagogies for social sustainability and inclusion, community resilience, and collaborative practices. He has expertise in design activism, co-creation, participatory approaches, and design processes and methodologies involving multiple stakeholders. He works in contexts challenged by socio-economic segregation, urban poverty, and diverse urban inequalities and injustices, both locally and internationally. His work builds on several years of experience in architectural practice, action-based pedagogy in higher education, and engagement with NGOs such as Architecture Sans Frontières.

Ali Cem Doğan is a filmmaker and cinematographer working in the field of documentary cinema. Focusing on the city, memory, and ecology, his work explores the relationships established with space and everyday life through visual storytelling. He is the coordinator of the Darağaç Collective in İzmir, where he develops practices centered on collective production, local context, and the commons, and contributes to collaborative processes by bringing together practitioners from diverse disciplines.

Zeynep Deniz Şahin is currently pursuing her undergraduate studies in the Department of Architecture at Istanbul Technical University and has been involved with the Taşkışla Devrim Garden since 2025. She explores how practices of collaborative creation and space-making contribute to developing and sustaining a shared understanding of living together in the city. Her areas of interest include slow fashion design and textile upcycling.

Melda Uyar completed her undergraduate studies in the Department of Architecture at Istanbul Technical University in 2025. While continuing her professional practice at an architecture and design office, she remains actively involved in collective production processes at Taşkışla Devrim Garden. Her interests include collective production, the commons, and alternative spatial organizations. She approaches architecture not only as a design discipline but also as a practice that opens up possibilities for solidarity and imaginaries of living together.