The Ode Select meetings, moderated by the architect Banu Uçak, hosted Alev Akın, founding partner of İŞTE Proje Yönetimi, and Görkem Volkan, founder of GVDS.
In the construction sector of our country, where a heavy blow has been dealt to gender equality, where young architects new to the profession cannot find work even at the minimum wage, where architecture offices struggle to create a sustainable income, and where, for architects of every group, labour is cheaper than ever and finding work and producing grows more arduous, three women architects who practise on their own in different fields, Alev Akın, Görkem Volkan and Banu Uçak, aimed to discuss the current architecture agenda from their own perspectives, rather than through a thematic content.
In a world where even a prize programme that belongs to a league of stars, such as the Pritzker, awards questioning the necessity of building, instead of making a new building, and giving a building a new use, instead of demolishing it, the aim is also to take up the distinction between the global architecture discourse and the realities of Türkiye, and the (weak) relation between the current state of architectural practice and the settings of architectural events and debate that continue in our country, perhaps more intensely and more vividly than ever.
It took place under the moderation of Banu Uçak, who has more than twenty years of experience in communication, real estate, materials and marketing in the building sector, with Alev Akın, who had spent a long time in various roles in the building sector even before founding her own project-management firm, İŞTE, and who is a board member of KAGİDER, which stands at the heart of projects that strengthen women through entrepreneurship, and with Görkem Volkan, founder of GVDS, one of the few architecture offices in our country founded by a woman architect, who has signed large-scale projects at home and abroad.