This conversation addresses an important aspect of Merve Bedir’s work (along with Jason Hilgefort at Land+Civilization Compositions) regarding the architectural and linguistic dimension of Turkish politics regarding the 2.5 million refugees the country currently “hosts”—the very notions of “host” and “guest” are the first things discussed here. Through the description of several sites of either appropriation or dispossession/detention by and of refugee bodies in Istanbul and in other regions of Turkey, we try to think of the architect’s political role and responsibility, remembering however that we must always doubt of our own actions when they have such drastic consequences. Merve Bedir ...

If you want to change the world, you need to start with great ideas. This volume focus in particular is on the cutting-edge thinking and wider theoretical questions and themes that underpin the series, from reflections upon what our ideas of “future” really mean to the changing role of the architecture profession as a whole. Comprising speculative visions, essays and texts, this volume serves as a theoretical backdrop for the practical approaches seen in Volume 3: The Site. This volume comprises speculative visions, essays and texts from contributors including: Ana Jeinić, Miloš Kosec, Clément Blanchet, Amateur Cities, Liam Young, Something Fantastic, ...

The area around Calais, a town in northern France, has for many years been a major transit point for refugees on their way to the United Kingdom. During the recent peak in the number of refugees, the French and British authorities increasingly fortified this border landscape, forcing those on the move to build increasingly permanent shelters for themselves. As this self-built city, also sometimes referred to as ‘the jungle’, continued to grow the response of the authorities became increasingly violent. By now, the self-built city has been fully evicted and demolished, displacing its inhabitants. The media hype following these events prompted ...

The editorial board began discussing this e-publication in the aftermath of summer 2015. The decision to put together this fifth edition, titled “Subjects and Objects in Exile”, was prompted by the many tragic displacements, fates and deaths of those seeking asylum in Europe and elsewhere. These enforced mass exiles are the result of civil wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The appalling and dehumanising management by European powers is having worrying economic, cultural, political and juridical implications. In this publication, we would like to address what has come to be called, not un-problematically we would argue, the European “refugee crisis”. ...