2025 - 2026 Fall
Landform & Built Envir. Studio
"Logistics of Time: Rediscovering the Lighthouse Landscape of İstanbul"

Landform and Built Environment Studio - PEM209E (CRN 13880) “Logistics of Time: Rediscovering the Lighthouse Landscape of İstanbul” will be conducted by Prof. Meltem Erdem Kaya @meltem_erdem_kaya and Res. Assist. Elif Ağaoğlu Yıldırım @elifagaogluu in the 2025-2026 Fall Semester.

The Landform & Built Environment Studio focuses on the basics of landscape architectonic design at the sophomore level in the Landscape Architecture Department at ITU. The studio's main goal is to introduce students to the basic elements of landscape architectonic design by addressing multi-dimensional aspects of landscape, topography, and built-environment. This semester the studio is structured around the theme of "Logistics of Time: Rediscovering the Lighthouse Landscape of İstanbul" where students will discover and reveal the hidden narratives of the lighthouses landscapes of Istanbul and investigate their spatial, contextual, and ecological relation to the land, sea, and people. The studio provides an environment where creative thinking is supported with experimental topographical designs.

In the context of the studio, students will be asked to interpret the existing topography of the Rumelifeneri and Anadolufeneri as the fundamental design element to understand the existing life patterns both from cultural and natural perspectives. Here each student is expected to generate their narratives to develop a deep understanding of the landscape of the lighthouse in relation to its history, its existing context, and its prospects. Here, the topography represents the life mediums, ecological and cultural processes, and daily practices to generate new landscape spaces.
The studio will be supported with site visits, design talks, seminars and workshops to enrich the landscape vision of the student’s, to discuss the current discourses, to provide technical information on representation skills via various tools and to create a vivid design environment within the studio.