Hi!
“utopiaLAB” started speaking Turkish because it believes that we need more Turkish conversation about contemporary “art, design, architecture” issues. That’s it! Of course, it will be revised in English also. Here you can read a little summary of my master thesis, Enjoy!
“Architecture has been understood as a vehicle or system for social change. From the age of Enlightment till Digital Age, the desire of improve society has been the role of architects. In the nineteenth century, architects built more social utopia. By the Twentieth Century, architects had internalized their relationship more politically in Capitalism. Then, they began to form new society of Infomartion Age or Digital Age according to new parameters. These new parameters of Information Age to form information society are speed, transparency and accessibility.
In todays’ world, called Digital Age, rather then utopia, utopian thinking is still valid. Despite of its negative and naive meaning, contemporary utopias are stil putting in thought. Social movements, like “occupygezi” in İstanbul, Turkey, proves that in the Twenty-First Century, public still has hope to fight for their rights in public space. As a conclusion, if collective hope is still remains but the term of utopia is not discussed, a necessity of an academic study about contemporary utopias should arise.
The core aim of this study is to make contemporary utopias sustainable in Digital Age. In relation to mentioned aim, as a case study, an open source code based website founded via web based co-design approach to discuss the role of utopist architect in a digital network system.”
from “TRANSFORMATION OF THE TERM OF UTOPIA IN DIGITAL AGE: THE ROLE OF ARCHITECT IN CO-DESIGN APPROACH”
Logo and pictograms of utopyaLab
melis baloglu 