Turkish architect and scholar Başak Eren, who is pursuing a PhD in architecture at Weitzman, and her fellow members of the research collective ba-be commons have been selected to curate the Turkish Pavilion at the 20th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice.
Commissioned by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), their project is entitled Spolia Futures and explores a method of construction that “changes and transforms over time and renews its relevance through the incorporation of new elements—under the categories of coexistence, archiving, decelerating, mending and speculation about the future,” according to IKSV’s announcement.
Spolia Futures is intended to offer new ways of rethinking architecture in the face of planetary crises. The exhibition is expected to draw on Türkiye’s cultures of making and mending to propose a circular, situated, and collective approach to architecture that challenges extractive production models. It will be developed through research and collaborations with artists to be announced, and will invite visitors “to explore, translate, and question the architectural legacies we leave behind.”
"We approach spolia not as a nostalgic practice, but as a way of imagining new futures through what already exists," says Eren. "Rather than treating buildings and materials as remnants of the past, we see them as resources for new forms of making, mending, and collective life. We hope visitors leave with a simple but urgent question: if today's architecture becomes tomorrow's spolia, how might future generations build with what we leave behind andwhat kinds of futures will it make possible?"
The research collective ba-be commons was founded by Eren, along with Asya Ece Uzmay, Beril Sarısakal Erkent, and Ece Yetim, who met at the Faculty of Architecture at Istanbul Technical University. Eren graduated in 2015, while the other members completed their architecture degrees in 2016. They later reunited around their shared interests in architectural history and theory, design, and representation. All four are affiliated with American universities: Uzmay is a PhD candidate at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning; Sarısakal Erkent is a PhD candidate at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; and Yetim teaches at the Wentworth Institute of Technology and the Rhode Island School of Design. In addition, the project will be supported by anthropologist Gokce Gunel (Rice University), and architectural historian Esra Akcan (Cornell University) as academic consultants.
The 20th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia will be on view from May 8 through November 21, 2027 in Giardini, Arsenale, and various sites around Venice. The title and theme of the exhibition have been announced by the president of La Biennale di Venezia, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, and the curators Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu as Do Architecture — For the Possibility of Coexistence Facing a Real Reality.
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