Firm： KOTUstudio

Type： Cultural › Gallery Museum Pavilion

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2015

SIZE： 0 sqft - 1000 sqft

Photos： Sahir Ugur Eren Architectural Photography (4)

KOTUstudio was asked to create a spatial framework for ‘VCMD: Caution! Slippery Ground’ exhibition in the Istanbul Modern Art Museum.

The exhibition focuses on multi states of architecture culture and on how the stationary ground -we, as architects, think we tread upon- is about to transform into a diversifying and multiplying condition. The design of the exhibition rests on an idea of involving cultural landscape. This landscape consists of surfaces and objects that are renewed in reference to the dynamic nature of culture.

The digital simulations done with found objects and the traces on an artificial ground, and the Culturescape emerged with an excavation process of formal relationships based on three ‘elements’; space, event and movement. The design of the exhibition implies that culture is not stationary or sterile, thus inhabits a variable and fragmenting structure within the exhibition space. The geometry is calculated according to certain optical and anamorphic principles, giving the proposal particular spatial readings from different points of view. Finally, the geometry of the fabrication and its relationship with the gallery and exhibited works are calibrated.

There are two main structures of the exhibition. One is the 20 meters long table hosting "the symbols and rituals" section of the exhibition. While the wooden, rectilinear table is shaping the visitor circulation in the space, carved traces of the culturescape create niches for exhibiting. And, the other structure is related to triangulated aluminum composite panel surfaces which are holding the works of participants. Since these surfaces are in contrast with "the symbols and rituals" sections, they blur the circulation. Correspondingly, the exhibition has no defined path to follow and the fragmentation pervades all the exhibition area.