Crystal Talk
Text: Friederike MeyerPhotos: Pinar Gedikozer, Christopher Horne, Prem Krishnamurthy,
Iwan Baan, Robert Huber, Superpool

Interview

Superpool


En route to the Superpool studio you pass electrical goods shops and watch makers. Two streets further the ferries bob up and down on the waves of the Bosphorus, and the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art is just around the corner. In the entrance of an office building that is perhaps 40 years old hangs a wooden sign with old-fashioned lettering “3. Kat Superpool”. The white floor brightens the giant office suite. Those present are seated at five long tables positioned between the columns. Plans on the wall reveal detailed drafts of a single-family dwelling. Boxes and files fill a metal shelving unit. They have just moved in.

Why did you setup your studio Superpool in Istanbul of all places?

Selva Gürdoğan:
After seven years abroad I wanted to get back to Istanbul.


Gregers Tang Thomsen:
The architecture scene in Istanbul is still undefined. We thought that would be exciting, there is still a lot to be done.

At the time you were just 27 and 33 years old.

Selva Gürdoğan:
Well, architects do work day and night. You can calculate their age in dog years.

Had you already landed a contract when you arrived in Istanbul?

Selva Gürdoğan:
No. We had a wedding present from my parents. Some start-up capital.

Gregers Tang Thomsen:
And an office on Taksim Square, for which we didn’t have to pay any rent. The tenants had shut down their company but had to be reachable there for another year. That is what the law says.


Selva Gürdoğan:
So we had their letterbox and the tea man.

A tea man?

Selva Gürdoğan:
Yes, he makes tea all day long. Every company in Turkey has one.

And where is the tea man in your new studio?

Selva Gürdoğan:
We no longer have one. We prefer to spend the money on our nanny.

Aha. Now it’s clear why there are a few toys peeking out of the shelves

What part of the city are we in here?

Gregers Tang Thomsen:
In Tophane. Right by the cruise ship terminal. There are lots of small shops here. You really can buy anything and always find someone to help you. The shop owners work together, they rely on each other. These are well-functioning networks, self-contained ecological systems.

Selva Gürdoğan:
Tophane still has character. You can be eating lunch with people who have been working here for 20 years. That’s nice, and typically Istanbul.


Typically old Istanbul? That doesn’t exactly sound like enthusiasm for transforming the city.

Selva Gürdoğan:
In the old days the import and export trade flourished here. The big customs unions, the many notaries public and service providers have since disappeared. The Chambers of Architects and Engineers have moved in in their place. The area is now also filling up with creative studios.

Gregers Tang Thomsen:
Moving to one of the new business quarters would not be fitting for us. We’re not a corporate office.

Selva Gürdoğan:
We have already lived in so many cities and tend to look for places which make the city unique. But in fact we don’t know the city very well ourselves.


Excuse me? I thought you knew Istanbul like the inside of your pocket.

Selva Gürdoğan:
Nobody knows this city really well. Information is kept very vague. It seems to be a political issue. Of course it leads to a lot of speculation, but there are perhaps some positive sides to it as well. That is eastern culture for you. Maps, like the ones we depend on in Europe, are not very common here. People tend to find their way around through social contact and verbal instruction. Along the lines of: make a left at the mosque.


With “Mapping Istanbul”, the book that maps the social and economic differences in the city’s different districts, were you intending to change this culture?

Gregers Tang Thomsen:
If we neither understand the city nor talk about it, we cannot improve it. Planners need maps for their drafts. Regardless of whether they are in Europe or Asia.

Rem Koolhaas began mapping parts of the world from the point of view of planners years ago. Do you see yourselves following in this tradition?


Selva Gürdoğan:
It has been a trend in the West for 20 years now. And in general it is quite simply a good way of communicating swiftly and comprehensively. We learned that at OMA. When we worked there we had never had much time to explain our ideas to Rem. Anything we wanted to say had to be clear in a visual sense.


I’m trying to imagine the course of your conversations with your clients. Selva, the Turk, Gregers, the blond northern European.

Selva seems to have been waiting for this question.

Selva Gürdoğan:
We use it to our advantage; some clients find speaking to a woman difficult, some speaking to a foreigner.

Can you speak Turkish, Gregers?

Gregers Tang Thomsen:
Not well enough to conduct negotiations. But 50 percent of our clients speak English..

Selva Gürdoğan:
I’m the one that normally does the speaking. In tricky situations it’s Gregers’ turn.

How do these negotiations proceed?

Gregers Tang Thomsen:
We pinpoint the problem, say how we intend to solve it and explain the advantages of our solution.

Selva Gürdoğan:
We recently attended a presentation by a German architect. He stood in front of his design and said: “I think this building is magnificent.” You can enjoy success this way too.

Gregers Tang Thomsen:
But we are more interested in dialog.

This becomes clear in our discussions as well: Selva answers as if she were hitting a backhand smash in a tennis match. Gregers, in contrast, attempts to keep our conversation balanced.

The two of you are living out the connection between East and West. Could one refer to Superpool as a synonym for what makes Istanbul the city it is?


Selva Gürdoğan:
In a way, yes. Gregers and I are an unusual combination. We bring opposites together.

Does that apply to your employees as well?

Gregers Tang Thomsen:
At the moment we are a team of four architects and three interns, among them two Germans and a Hungarian. We have had employees from Korea, Canada, Denmark, and Spain, for example …


On their office chairs they both roll across to the neighboring table, on which there are any number of polystyrene models. They explain the ideas for the presentation of the works of art for the United Arab Emirates’ entry to this year’s Venice Biennale, and for the “Becoming Istanbul” exhibition, which just opened in the SALT, a prominent art institution in Istanbul.

Lots of your projects can only be seen as images. The Open Library in the exhibition room at Garanti Gallery ran for a limited period of time, as did the exhibition Open City you designed with the support of 2009 Rotterdam Biennale. How come you primarily build temporary things?

Selva Gürdoğan:
Because in some cases the major construction projects move forward very slowly. Exhibitions are only ever on display for a few months, and so there is far more leeway in terms of design.

Selva produces a purple leaflet.


Selva Gürdoğan:
Here’s our latest map. It shows the flat roads in Istanbul on which one could cycle. Of course at the moment that is pretty dangerous, as drivers are not used to cyclists. But the city could negotiate, for example, for bicycles to be allowed on busses where the roads are too steep to cycle. The newspapers already ran a report on the subject. They printed our telephone number and now every other day we have someone calling and wanting a copy of the map.

What is luxury for you?

Selva Gürdoğan:
Being able to work with great people. Like, for example, the New York graphic designers Project Projects on the “Mapping Istanbul” book.

Gregers Tang Thomsen:
It all becomes far more interesting if we are able to bounce ideas aroundwith someone, if there are various approaches on both sides.

Selva Gürdoğan:
Things get complicated if there is no designing involved. For this reason we recently turned down a contract to fit out a company’s offices. We don’t want to just pick something out of a catalog and ask for money for doing so, or plan interior fittings for people who want a specific style. We don’t want to be sticking stucco on ceilings.


It would appear, though, that only a few of the almost 40,000 registered architects in Istanbul think that way. Most of the new buildings here look just like those in international real estate catalogs.

Gregers Tang Thomsen:
It really isn’t easy to find architecture that is based on creative ideas here.

Selva Gürdoğan:
Much of it comes about using the copy-and-paste principle, not as a result of a problem having been given serious consideration. That, however, is the case elsewhere too. When clients approach an architect they often have a clear picture in their mind. This is a picture they have seen countless times, there is no way it can be state-of-the-art architecture. We can only ever try to propose something different.



In Germany there is widespread discussion about restoring “Old Town” quarters. Is this an issue in Istanbul as well?

Selva Gürdoğan:
There were rumors about demolishing all the concrete buildings in the Old Town and building new ones that look old in their place. Like a museum.

Is there any public discussion on the matter?

Selva Gürdoğan:
Istanbul has no culture for debate, at best “yes or no” discussions. Those “discussions” on a third bridge over the Bosphorus, for example; that could not be called a constructive process.


Gregers Tang Thomsen:
There is no infrastructure for debate in the field of urban development. Political topics are a different matter. There is endless debate over politics.

Did 2010, the year of the European Capital of Culture in Istanbul, change anything?

Gregers Tang Thomsen:
People learned that they can and indeed should be involved in their city. Foundations were established to give grants for projects, which take the city as their theme. This triggered several platforms for discussion.

Selva Gürdoğan:
There are now lots of Turkish artists who are well-known worldwide, but the names of Turkish designers and architects are yet to reach an international audience. There are plans for a Design Biennale in 2012 in Istanbul, which is intended to establish the scene on the global stage. The ”Becoming Istanbul“ exhibition, which will be showcased in September at SALT is also intended to play a role in this.


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Friederike Meyer conducted the interview.
Friederike Meyer studied Architecture in Aachen and graduated from the Berlin School of Journalism. She is a member of the editorial staff of Bauwelt.

project management: Andrea Nakath/Ines Bahr