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Media Archive 90’s

ByTuncer Cakmakli Mayıs 27, 2001 Uncategorized

Media Archive 90’s Mayıs 27, 2001

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Media Archive 80’s

ByTuncer Cakmakli Mayıs 27, 1999 Uncategorized

Media Archive 80’s Mayıs 27, 1999

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Since humanity first began to reflect upon its own

On the Patient Anatomy of a Design – or: How Mea

Architecture, Trust, and the Fragility of Creative

The Semantic Weight of the Threshold: Doors as Ope

TECTUM The Threshold as a Sign – There are place

RIYADH MOSQUE There are places in every city that

“The Bathroom as a Mirror of Civilization” Wh

• Helsinki Architecture & Design Museum In the

A Sign in the Landscape An Essay about a House Tha

The Art of Designing – Architecture as a Meaning

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Since humanity first began to reflect upon its own

Since humanity first began to reflect upon its own existence, the search for faith has accompanied it as an inseparable companion. The unknown, the inexplicable, and the awareness of our own mortality urged human beings to seek a form of inner equilibrium—one they often believed could be found in faith. Across millennia, different religious paths emerged, yet all of them—despite their variety—sought to offer the same promise: inner peace.
And if Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey stands today as one of the earliest known expressions of sacred yearning, it reveals something remarkable: that human beings, regardless of the form their beliefs took, were bound together by the same questions, the same fears, and the same hopes.
Yet the paradox remains: although humans are equal before God, history is marked by countless wars waged in God’s name. Boundaries have been drawn, sacrifices demanded—and still demanded—though life on Earth is only a brief gift allotted to each of us. The joy of living together should be a shared experience, not a battleground. Humanity’s inability to understand the roots of this inner discord is one of its oldest tragedies; the primordial tale of Cain and Abel shows how jealousy, the desire for possession, and intolerance toward the Other were woven into the early fabric of our consciousness.
Prof.Paul Schütz&Rainer Maul-TCA
#church #iznik #architecture #göbeklitepe #design #christian

On the Patient Anatomy of a Design – or: How Mea

On the Patient Anatomy of a Design – or: How Meaning is Stitched Layer by Layer
By one who lives among signs, models, and nights
There is, in the work of the TCA team, a peculiar, almost medieval rigor that recalls the workshops of the early cathedrals. There, as here, nothing begins with a mere line on paper, but with the patient investigation of the problem itself: the field in which the building will arise is not simply measured, but questioned – as if it were a witness, carrying in its landscape, its history, and its silences the answers we seek.
Yet the decisive step – and here TCA differs from the more impatient ateliers of our time – is the first physical grasp of the material: the working model.
From the outset, several models emerge in parallel, each in a different scale. This is not excess, but method: the 1:500 scale speaks of urban forces; the 1:100 reveals spatial proportions; the 1:20 has already begun to tell of surfaces, shadows, of the touch of a hand. And so these objects are not merely built, but interrogated, rotated, dismantled – day and night, often in silence, sometimes in the heat of a dispute that resembles a philosophical colloquium more than an architect’s meeting.
Each of these nights leaves traces. Not in the coffee on the table or the dust on the cutting mat, but in the deepened understanding of the building mass. The design does not grow linearly, but like a palimpsest: each layer bearing the scars and revelations of the one before.
The Guggenheim project in Helsinki shows this working method in its purest form. Here, urban and spatial meanings intertwined into a dense textile skin that wrapped itself around the building mass like a carefully woven coat.
In the sum of these steps, one sees a quiet truth: TCA does not simply construct forms. TCA dresses meaning in matter. And that – like all serious crafts – demands time, devotion, and the willingness to lose oneself in the darkness of one’s own questions until the morning brings a little more clarity.

#helsinki #design #architecture #3d #3dmodel

Architecture, Trust, and the Fragility of Creative

Architecture, Trust, and the Fragility of Creative Work
Architecture is far more than the arrangement of walls, ceilings, and windows; it is the foundation of our human civilization, the visible expression of culture, dreams, and the ambitions of a society. It reflects not only functional necessities but also the subtle longings for aesthetics, harmony, and meaning. After the division of labor—where the architect, supported by education and experience, orchestrates the multitude of services—a special relationship emerges: that between architect and client, formed from trust, respect, and the shared vision of a building.
This trust is based on knowledge of the best possible execution—functional, economical, and unique in design. It is trust in the abilities of a team that works tirelessly, penetrating every sketch, model, and calculation, to transform the client’s vision into reality. In these hours, nights, and days of dedication, not only professionalism manifests itself, but also a quiet devotion to the very idea of building.
The presentation of designs to the client, accompanied by their high enthusiasm and amazement, is the moment when the idea comes alive. Here begins the detailed planning, carried by the fairly compensated work of the architect team, nurtured by the recognition and support that keeps creativity alive.

#museum #technical #architecture #basedontruestory #trust #space #museumdesign

The Semantic Weight of the Threshold: Doors as Ope

The Semantic Weight of the Threshold: Doors as Operators of Space
To imagine the door as merely a hole in the wall, a trivial device to overcome masonry, is not just a simplification but an impoverishment of thought. The door is not a negligible detail but the first semantic act of architecture. It separates by establishing distinction: a Here from a There, an Inside from an Outside, the Profane from the Sacred.
For those who read architecture as text, the door is not punctuation but the beginning of the sentence. It is the paragraph that structures the narrative of space. The salon is not defined by its furniture but by the fact that a door marks it as such. Without the threshold, without this mark, space remains faceless, an amorphous container.
Yet true power lies not in the door but in the threshold. This modest line, once crossed, becomes a ritual. One knocks, one waits, one enters—and in that act the body, the voice, the inner posture are transformed. The threshold is less a place than a time: the suspended moment in which identity shifts, from guest to entrant, from outsider to participant.
In this semantics unfolds the philosophy of TCA. Against industrial indifference, which treats the door as a standardized spare part, they insist that each door has its own language. It becomes a vertical canvas, a scene upon which the dialogue between interior and exterior begins. The door to a library is not simply wood and hinge—its weight, texture, and handle articulate silence and contemplation. A communal door, by contrast, speaks in transparency and lightness.
Thus every act of opening becomes a conscious performance: a hand on the handle, a moment of anticipation, and the space behind reveals itself not as function but as experience. The door is not the limit but the prologue, the prelude to a poem of space, light, and silence.
Genius lies in transforming the most universal architectural element into a unique event of encounter—a discreet gesture that contains the very key to understanding the built world.
#door #thedoor #design #wood #architecture #semantics #space #line

TECTUM The Threshold as a Sign – There are place

TECTUM
The Threshold as a Sign –
There are places that seem to be mere passages: entrances, gates, canopies, zones of control. And yet it is precisely at these thresholds that the drama of the public and the private, of inside and outside, of arrival and departure, unfolds. In Bursa, before a monumental marketplace where streams of people and goods flow each day, such a place is being reimagined.
TCA conceives of this threshold not as a mere functional detail but as an architectural metaphor. The gate is not simply a checkpoint, not merely a security barrier against disorder, but a stage: it welcomes and it bids farewell, it illuminates and becomes a sign itself.
The response to this challenge is an elliptical disc, hovering, almost weightless. It rests upon slender steel columns, raised like fingers pointing toward the sky. At night, it shines — radiant like an artificial moon, a symbol of vigilance and a promise of protection. By day, it slices through the air with knife-like precision, separating inside from outside, yet never rendering that separation absolute: for every boundary is also a connection.
Thus, the canopy becomes not only a physical barrier but also an event of light and shadow. Whoever enters feels the dignity of the space; whoever departs experiences the ritual of farewell. The invisible — surveillance, order, security — merges with the visible — form, materiality, radiance — to create an architecture of attention.
This floating ellipse is more than a roof. It is a sign in the urban memory: a monument to coming and going, a threshold that not only protects but interprets. It declares to all who pass beneath it: Here begins a space of meaning.

#entrance #design #3d #model #bursa #steel #architechture #space

RIYADH MOSQUE There are places in every city that

RIYADH MOSQUE
There are places in every city that are more than a mere fabric of streets and façades. They are carriers of signs, symbols that shape a community and inscribe its memory into the future. The commission to build, in the very heart of Riyadh, a mosque that is simultaneously a foundation and an urban center with commercial spaces, is more than an architectural program.
The mosque – for centuries it has been a place of gathering, of contemplative order, of ritual rhythm in which the individual and the community turn toward transcendence. It is not only a built space; it is semiotics in stone: the orientation toward Mecca as an arrow of meaning, the minaret as a voice in the urban palimpsest, the courtyard as a stage of encounter.
Yet here, in the center of Riyadh, a second syntax joins this sacred vocabulary: the commercial spaces, conceived as an endowment. For the patron – the Saudi prince who acts in the name of his father – inscribes through this gesture a chapter of continuity: a building that is at once spiritual heritage and economic foundation for the community and its future.
The task of TCA – Tuncer Cakmaklı Architects is therefore not only to build, but to interpret. One must read as a philologist does: the signs of tradition, the texts of Islamic geometry, the invisible strata of the city of Riyadh.
The mosque must not only be space, but sign. It must mark, within the dense texture of the city, a point of gathering, a silent center that acts like a breath.
The architecture of TCA can here become a hermeneutics: a reading of Islam that also thinks of urbanity; a morphology that unites heaven and earth within a single construction.
And so, the commission is not merely the erection of a building. It is the creation of a symbol, a sign at the heart of Riyadh, one that will endure for centuries. A construction that narrates – of faith, of community, of responsibility, and of the infinite human capacity to bestow meaning through architecture.

#riyadh #mosque #design #architecture #islam #religion

“The Bathroom as a Mirror of Civilization” Wh

“The Bathroom as a Mirror of Civilization”

When humankind settled down, when it began to build houses, it did not begin with the roof—but with fire and water. Since the dawn of sedentary life, the need to cleanse the body has evolved from a mere survival instinct into a cultural expression. Where once the riverbank sufficed, architecture demanded a new space: the bathroom.
Yet the bathroom is more than a place for hygiene. It is a declaration of how we perceive the human body—whether as a temple, a machine, or a projection of purity, control, and identity. In the Roman thermae, the bath was not only functional but social, even sacred. Bodily care became a public ritual, akin to attending mass on Sunday.
In our post-industrial age—especially in the urban context—the bathroom has become the final refuge of the individual. A private cocoon where body, mirror image, and silence encounter one another.
Thus, the architectural studio TCA, located in a 120-year-old historic building in the heart of Istanbul’s Galata district—a city within the city—faced the task of designing bathrooms that were both functional and poetic, in the tightest of spaces. In a building whose walls breathe history, not a single centimeter could be wasted. Yet each floor was equipped with a bathroom that fulfilled more than necessity—it offered experience.
With movable washbasins, showers, and toilets, clad in delicately veined Marmara marble, miniature sanctuaries of comfort were created. The walls, proportioned according to the golden ratio, transform even a brief visit into a quiet composition of light, material, and measure. It is a bathroom that cleanses not only the body but also sharpens the eye—for what design, at its best, can offer: order, dignity, and poetry in the everyday.
Just as the library is a mirror of thought, the bathroom is a mirror of the body.

#bathroom #mirror #design #body #bath #architecture

• Helsinki Architecture & Design Museum In the

• Helsinki Architecture & Design Museum

In the quiet of Helsinki’s harbor, where international ferries arrive from afar, and the Old Town stands as a silent witness of history, a new conception of architecture takes shape – one that does not merely construct spaces, but weaves thoughts, memories, and meanings. The TCA team pursued this vision not with the haste of technology or the rush of the market, but with a meditative patience, emerging only from observing nature itself.

Above this massive wooden block floats the linear, almost weightless structure, like a cloud above the landscape. It winds lightly, like a thought, over the city, like a serpent of light and material. Within it are the exhibition spaces – the very heart of the museum.

Herein lies the strength of the design: architecture is not only a means of presenting design and architecture, but itself becomes a subject for intellectual engagement. The wooden block defines ground, stability, and materiality; the floating line defines light, transparency, and movement.

It is as if the museum itself were a thought rendered in space and material: tree and cloud, heavy and light, familiar and new. It invites visitors to contemplate architecture and design not merely as functional solutions, but as carriers of culture, identity, and human experience.

TCA design treats the museum as a multilayered sign: speaking of wood and light, city and nature, matter and idea. It urges visitors not only to see, but to interpret, reflect, and move in a dialogue between nature, culture, and architecture.

In contemplating this design, one realizes: architecture is not merely enclosure, not merely space, not merely design. It is a space for the mind, a place where history, present, and future can be perceived, experienced, and thought simultaneously. And in Helsinki, at the waterfront, between harbor and Old Town, the line floats like a cloud, while the massive timber block mirrors the roots of the city and nature – a monument to the idea itself.

#helsinki #museum #helsinkimuseum #architecture #designmuseum #architecturemuseum #helsinkifinland #finland #finlandmuseum #museumdesign

A Sign in the Landscape An Essay about a House Tha

A Sign in the Landscape
An Essay about a House That Wishes to Be More Than a House

There are places where things do not merely exists, but instead carry meaning—as though part of an alphabet that only the patient can read. The mountains above Lugano are such a place. The air is thinner here, yes—but not only in a physical sense. The gaze, the thought, even history itself seem clarified here, stripped bare, almost archaic.
The landscape—let us call it semantically complete—is made up of fragments of memory: dry-stone walls, weathered timber beams, roofs crouching like animals in hibernation. The architecture that has survived here for centuries is not mere shelter, but a manifestation of topography, an echo of slope and sun, of alpine silence.
The client—wise, daring, or perhaps both—did not desire a bland volume, a typological cliché. He envisioned a sign, a built form that would exist not only in physical space, but in cultural space as well. Something to inhabit, observe, and question. A holiday house, yes—but also a semantic event.
The result: an oval volume, somewhere between nautilus shell and spacecraft, between primordial egg and American football. This form—curved, gliding, soft—resists Cartesian logic, defies the right angle. It is an architectural “perhaps.”
And yet it is precise: prefabricated in a workshop, crafted from sustainable wood, accurate like a Swiss timepiece, delivered by helicopter—an act of logistical choreography. One might say: a modern myth.
Each apartment is an autonomous narrative. Spaces that unfold not by norm, but by intention. Interiors that not only function, but signify.

And so it stands, this building. Not a foreign object—but not a chameleon either. It does not crouch, but it does not shout.
For architecture is not only what is built. Architecture is what is told—about place, about people, about time. This house in the heights of Lugano is such a telling. Perhaps not an easy text. But a necessary one.
#architecture #wood #woodworking #shingle #lugano #switzerland

The Art of Designing – Architecture as a Meaning

The Art of Designing – Architecture as a Meaningful Quest
Architecture is more than the mere construction of walls and roofs. It is a multifaceted discourse, a semiotic world where forms and spaces carry not only function but meaning. Architects like TCA decipher the questions of time and place in their designs, offering answers—not as mere solutions but as rich, multifaceted experiences.
TCA understands design not as a spontaneous act of creation, but as rigorous research. Every question, every demand is simultaneously a problem to be carefully explored and penetrated. The search for the core of the problem is the first act of a lengthy investigation involving models, sketches, and design iterations. These tools are not just means of visualization but vehicles through which meaning is shaped and articulated.
Once the problem-finding phase is complete, an uninterrupted, almost meditative phase of elaboration begins. Models are built, dismantled, reinvented; sketches arise, fade, and take new form—a continual negotiation between idea and reality. This process imbues the design with meaning and breathes life into it.
A particularly striking example of this methodology is seen in the project of the Vegetable and Wholesale Market Hall, where TCA creates not only functional spaces but a symphonic composition of spatial and façade design with offices and communal areas. Here, the façade becomes a musical score that melodiously and rhythmically envelops the users, offering them a spatial experience that goes far beyond mere pragmatic use. Architecture becomes a musical image in which users and space engage in harmonious dialogue.
With each design, TCA transforms spaces into meaningful experiences, presenting architecture as a profound language—a language expressed in the tension between research, intuition, and cultural significance.
#wholesale #market #design #architecture #vegatables #türkiye

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Galıp Dede Caddesi Yörük Çıkmazı 8 | 34420 Beyoğlu Istanbul Tel. +90 (212) 249 21 64 | Fax +90 (212) 249 22 95 | info@cakmakli.com

Galıp Dede Caddesi Yörük Çıkmazı 8 | 34420 Beyoğlu Istanbul Tel. +90 (212) 249 21 64 | Fax +90 (212) 249 22 95 | info@cakmakli.com