Çamdibi Institute for Standardization
Installation: Metal Construction, Vinyl Print, Fluorescent Light
270×300×300CM
2018
The Çamdibi Institute for Standardization is an installation that interrogates the accelerated urban metamorphosis reshaping non-Western cities over the past two decades, alongside the psychological and spatial disorientation it generates. Situated within this discourse, the project positions Çamdibi—a neighborhood undergoing rapid transformation—as a laboratory for examining the tensions between dystopian realities and utopian aspirations. Since 2014, the area has been documented through an evolving network of photographs, texts, and experiential observations, culminating in The Çamdibi Project Book (2015), which serves as both archive and critique of urban flux.
The installation draws conceptual resonance from Mike Davis’s Planet of Slums, which envisions future cities as sprawling mosaics of provisional materials—rough brick, straw, recycled plastic, and scrap—rather than the glass-and-steel utopias imagined by modernist planners. This dichotomy frames Çamdibi’s liminal state: a space suspended between the aspirational frameworks of urban “progress” and the fragmented, improvisational realities of its inhabitants. The work interrogates how such neighborhoods, caught in the crosscurrents of development, embody a paradoxical coexistence of utopian promise and dystopian precarity.
Materiality anchors the installation’s critique. Spanning nine square meters, the structure employs chain-link fencing—materials synonymous with informal urbanism and temporary construction—to reconstruct a fragmented skyline. These elements, often associated with demarcation and exclusion, are reconfigured into a labyrinthine form that manipulates perspective. The outer perimeter’s jagged edges and porous boundaries evoke the ad-hoc landscapes of rapidly transforming settlements, where provisional structures and makeshift repairs dominate. Within this frame, a series of distorted sightlines and receding planes destabilize the viewer’s spatial orientation, mirroring the disjuncture between orderly urban planning and the chaotic materiality of lived environments.
The installation’s spatial dynamics further amplify this tension. When viewed from a fixed vantage point, the structure generates an illusion of depth, with elements appearing to retreat or contort. This unreachable void alludes to the elusive ideal of utopian urbanism—a mirage that recedes even as communities are reshaped in its name. The experience parallels the psychological undulations of residing in a neighborhood like Çamdibi, where the ground beneath one’s feet seems to shift between demolition and reconstruction.
By foregrounding materials that signal impermanence—rusted metal, weathered plastics, fractured barriers—the work underscores the provisionality of urban “standardization” in non-Western contexts. These choices reflect the paradox of development: the pursuit of futuristic cities often relies on disposable, transient resources, leaving communities suspended in a state of perpetual becoming. The installation’s interplay of obstruction and revelation—walls that both conceal and frame, barriers that partition yet invite scrutiny—echoes the fragmented visibility of urban change, where macro-level policies collide with micro-level resistance and adaptation.
Ultimately, the Çamdibi Institute for Standardization operates as a spatial metaphor for the dissonance between urban imaginaries and material realities. It visualizes how neighborhoods in flux become sites of contested narratives, where the physicality of scrap and concrete speaks as loudly as the ideologies that shape them. Through its layered materiality and destabilizing perspectival play, the installation invites reflection on the human and architectural costs of progress, framing Çamdibi not as an anomaly, but as a microcosm of global urban futures.
