Syn-Oikos

May 2022
ITU Architectural Design MSci 
Project 1_with Mine Öztürk and Selen Çatal.


The categorical distinction between nature and culture, the unbalanced relationship established by architecture, begins with humans’ first construction, building a shelter to separate themselves from nature and its forces from the “other.” The first shelters were shaped around an approach that creates boundaries and is centered on human needs by creating an internal-external distinction. In this research, the fact that the borders established by modern architecture, which is considered the architecture of purity in the literature, are not only visible and perceived, together with the environmental conditions and the inclusion of the living thing in materiality, is discussed. To see the buildings in which humans live not as solid objects but as areas of interaction, it is necessary to be aware of the potential of the structural components that are thought to form the boundary, which are permeable and porous. By moving away from the interior-exterior distinction, the architectural object that allows nature to infiltrate with the pores it contains will be a part of ecology by emphasizing the unity of different beings. With the findings of the research conducted through Atlas, an experimental area was established within the framework of the rules determined by evaluating the five principles and architectural components that establish Villa Savoye and the relations of living things with the pores of different scales. In this context, “syn-oikos” offers architects an experimental field where they can practice design for different users with Villa Savoye’s porous structural components. To understand the actions, reactions, and interactions of doing and living together, the experimental field opens a new life to discussion through symbiosis.

Figure 1. Conceptual relationships.

Figure 2. Theoretical framework.

Figure 3. Houses are places where different lives are established and settled in different temporalities. It legitimizes not only human life but also the existence of many animate and inanimate individuals and defines a new life through symbiosis. This drawing aims to read different togetherness through architectural elements and to make an architectural object’s life visible.

Figure 4. Synanthropic organisms.

Figure 5. Investigation of the nest locations of synanthropic organisms that settled in the pores of Villa Savoye at different scales.

Figure 6. Synanthropic creatures x structural components matrix.

Figure 7. Syn-oikos setup.

Figure 8. Syn-oikos setup.

Figure 9. Building together for all.

Figure 10. Syn-oikos model.