In Other Latitudes

Overview

In Other Latitudes course offered by Architectural Association will be located in the center of Izmir to view the recurring condition of displacement and its effects on the city. 

The historically migrant neighborhoods surrounding Izmir’s Roman Agora continue to be the point of arrival in the city for contemporary refugees due to the construction of the train station in the 19th century. 

Providing a kind of spatial lab to study resettlement, contemporary solutions of housing and integration can be observed. 

By looking at urban space within architectural, sociological, and political discourses, discussions on issues of identity, temporality, and informality are developed. 

Here, we will be facilitating points of contact and observing cultural products of migrants from within by examining the material conditions of social frameworks and their manifestations in architecture.

Skills Developed

• Field experience observing self-made spaces of migrants

• Understanding contemporary methodologies to house lower-class emigrants

• Finding cultural elements embedded in the social and built environment

• Theoretical lectures on spatial reflections of displacement

• Effects of significant events in Mediterranean migration such as the Greek population exchange of 1923

• Observing traces of traditional Greek architecture present in current migrant neighborhoods

• Visiting preserved structures of Sephardic Jewish architectural heritage

• Social acquaintance with inhabitants of areas occupied by displaced people

• Visiting roman ruins of the Agora of Smyrna

• Visiting solidarity spaces, informal community spaces, and an art collective

• Archival findings

• Production and projection of migration films and video documentation

• Experimentation with various recording methods and mapping techniques