We are long gone children!

We owe this loss of nondimensional imagination and vast curiosity and unique
characteristics to this infertile, built environment.

Potentials of everyday life are in the hands of the ones who fictionalize the built
environment around us. Potentials of new “ways of perceiving” the physical world, not
through imparted knowledge or ongoing system of understanding/explaining our
observations, are in the hands of the ones who build the structure of today’s form and norm
of living. We, as the main agents to this act, stick our hands into the [children’s brain], and
leave our handprint in the most OBSCURE and remote points, preventing those points from
developing a unique way of processing and projecting information. Any human made product
that has been processed by a certain way of seeing is creating the platform for yesterday’s,
today’s understanding, and most importantly tomorrow’s possibilities. If the “product” is a
necessity, more radically a basic need of surviving, it requires different approaches of
consideration. Just like in the case of architectural practice; people need shelter! So without
disowning the reality of basic needs, every single one of them should be reconsidered and
redefined according to our relation with time. Not a linear relationship, as we comprehend
and express the time.

How much of space* is left for human* to move and decide freely without any previsions* of
the architect that was projected onto the perceivable surrounding of the physical world? How
untouched* architecture could leave human’s mind while its whole aim is to design a fiction
that tends to dictate a form of living?

Our habits follows our habitats. And habitats are shaped based on a limited perception of a
space by a limited perception of (mostly singular) one’s traditional mind. Our habits change
inside the borders of what our habitat is providing for us, in other words inside the borders of
a single mind: The Architect!
On the opposite of borders of habitats that gives birth to our habits; there are “voids”; spatial
“reflective” spaces that blend with one’s (in most cases children) mind to create a dynamic
zone for everlasting brain activity. It grants the personal perception to project its distinctive
vision. From micro to macro; habitat as a room and habitat as a city…
City-scale considerations create a space for the imagination of children, blur the boundaries,
so they could become individuals; the true meaning of the word itself, a single human being
as distinct from a group.
Architecture has been one of the major ways to define a way of life, or express a form of
living. Around the world, throughout the history, all these systemmatic information transfers
defined spaces that impose the same daily action on people. That way humanity, as a whole,
almost reunited. From the very first community of homo sapiens, to nowadays; although our
daily actions changed in terms of “how” it is still as primitive in terms of “why”. But now, is the
time to question the “why”!
 Spatial experience is the internalization of evaluations that belongs to an individual, based
on individual’s perception and bodily capabilities. This experience are is like a chain reactor
for children, it is fast and forceful. Each modern piece of architecture and its perceptual
potentials were tested and used by children. And they become the grown ups of today.
Children’s urge of exploring shapes the built environment and internalize the experience,
resulting in using the components of the built environment different than what it was assigned
for. And in most cases, it can not be considered that grown ups could be out of the norms of
usage. It would socially accepted as a ridiculous act. So what is the reason behind that
change? It can not be reduced to a matter of “TIME!”.
Individual’s character is shaped by the impositions of his social environment that results in
unconscious assimilation of a possible unique mind. And also, the role of architecture on this
assimilation is highly underrated. It is the plane where we’ve been projecting our imagination
as kids, and now as long gone children*.

In the end, we can possibly reduce the content of our discussion to a shallow explanation of
a deeper understanding; “children” (referring to a state of mind, a quality and a quantity) must
be the main character of any architectural practice.

All possible scenerios of spatial fiction should be based on children’s benefit. Because only
from there we would step forward from this sticky status quo. Only by turning the predictable
to unpredictable and using the space to reflects one’s brain; we can change this ongoing
global assimilation that aims to create an army of fabricated brains that desire pretty much
same things. Majority may think that it is a concern of education system. But what we
understand from “education” should not be linked to an individual passing on information to
the young. Instead it being a reflex that could be collected only from books and “masters”; we
should be aware that unpredictable and unusual fictions of a space is also a method of
“education”. And it is the golden one. Without words or sentences, only by reaching and
penetrating one’s abstract thoughts!

An initiator for a reaction, without leading it; that’s the whole point!

Talha Uçar Cihat Ayaz Arın Aydoğdu