Kent Düşleri Workshops XIX: Defining Immaterial Space

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Kent Düşleri Workshops XIX

Istanbul · 1 July 2026

As part of Kent Düşleri Workshops XIX, I presented “Defining Immaterial Space” (Immaterial Mekânı Tanımlamak), reflecting on a series of spatial experiments developed over several years.    

The opening program began with remarks by Prof. Dr. Alper Ünlü, Chair of the Istanbul Metropolitan Branch of the Chamber of Architects, followed by a thematic presentation by Cihan Baysal Uzunçarşılı introducing this year’s workshop framework. The program continued with my presentation, “Defining Immaterial Space,” alongside Tuğba Öztürk’s “The Metabolism of the Digital City.”

The presentation began with a fundamental question: Can space be understood not only as a physical volume, but as a whole shaped through sensory and cognitive perception? From this perspective, the talk explored whether space might be reconsidered through the individual components of perception - including visual movement, colour, rhythm, brightness, sound, spatiality, frequency, tempo, intensity, tactility and physical boundaries.   

Central to the discussion was the changing role of the participant: from a passive receiver who experiences and interprets space, to an active producer who continuously constructs it while simultaneously becoming part of what is being produced.     

These ideas were discussed through a selection of works developed by İlişimler Kolektifi, including NORM, NOTR, AION and KHORA, tracing an evolving investigation into generative systems, projection, sound, interaction, physiological data and responsive environments. The most recent work, KHORA, extends this trajectory through real-time EEG and heart-rate data, transforming the participant’s cognitive and physiological states into an evolving audiovisual and spatial environment.   

Across these works, immaterial space emerges not as the absence of space, but as a spatial condition continuously reconstructed through perception, interaction, body, technology and experience.