ISTANBUL.- One of the world’s leading architecture events, the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia will take place on May 28 – 27 November, 2016. Following an open-call and a two-stage evaluation, the selection committee has determined the project that will be exhibited at the Pavilion of Turkey, under the coordination of the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts.

Led by Mehmet Kütükçüoğlu, Ertuğ Uçar, and Feride Çiçekoğlu with the support of Namık Erkal and Cemal Emden, and created by the team composed of Hüner Aldemir, Hande Ciğerli, Gökçen Erkılıç, Nazlı Tümerdem and Yiğit Yalgın, the project entitled Darzanà will be exhibited in the Pavilion of Turkey at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia.

Inspired by the Mediterranean’s once twin harbours of Venice and Istanbul, the project’s title comes from the word Darzanà, meaning an inlet used for building ships in Ancient Greek, Latin, Jewish, Arabic, and Turkish cultures. The project aims to confront the Arsenale and the historic Istanbul shipyards at the biennial, carrying the Istanbul dock and its accompanying historic associations, exchanges, discussions, similarities, and visions of the future to a shipyard in Venice.

The Pavilion of Turkey exhibition is coordinated by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, and realised under the co-sponsorship of Schüco Turkey and VitrA, and the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey.

The Pavilion of Turkey opened at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia in 2014 for the first time, upon a 20-year allotment of the Arsenale with İKSV’s initiation and the contribution of 21 supporters.

The selection committee chose the Darzanà project among the applications made in response to an open-call, after a series of assemblies. The application process ended on 23 October, leaving 36 eligible projects to committee’s evaluation. Darzanà was chosen among the 9 projects that made their way to the final round completed on Friday, 11 December. Among the committee’s members are Prof. Dr. Sibel Bozdoğan, Head of the Architecture Department at Kadir Has University’s Faculty of Art and Design, and Faculty Member at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD); Levent Çalıkoğlu, Director of Istanbul Modern, Istanbul Museum of Modern Art; Prof. Dr. Arzu Erdem, Dean of Faculty of Architecture at Abdullah Gül University; Prof. Dr. Murat Güvenç, Director of the Istanbul Studies Centre at Kadir Has University and Faculty Member at Kadir Has University’s Faculty of Economic Administrative and Social Sciences, Political Science and Public Administration; Yeşim Hatırlı, Founding Partner of Hatırlı Architecture Co. Ltd., Member of the Turkish Association of Architecture in Private Practice, and Visiting Lecturer at the Middle East Technical University’s Department of Architecture; Prof. Dr. Süha Özkan, Founding President of the International Union of Architects; and Prof. Dr. Uğur Tanyeli, Dean of Bilgi University’s Faculty of Architecture.

Details regarding the Pavilion of Turkey at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia and Darzanà project will be announced in 2016.