Merve Bedir. The Housing Condition in Casino Urbanism

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What: 
Online discussion
Where: 
online
When:
27.05.2021 - 19:00
MERVE BEDIR
THE HOUSING CONDITION IN CASINO URBANISM
 

Moderated by Anna Bitkina and Maria Veits / TOK

May 27, 2021
19.00 (Moscow time)/18.00 (CET) 
 
 

This presentation utilizes the casino as an allegory of housing urbanization in accelerated capitalism. The global financial regime, which has proven to be only for sustaining itself, resulted in humanless cities, vacant mega projects at the periphery of the urban sphere that do not respond to people's demands. Speculation on public housing has become gambling, not only gambling by global investment but also through national guarantee schemes, which are funded with public tax budgets. The life promised with these projects through glossy renders vs. the life that occurs (alienation, no empathy, violence, disposable human) constitute the culture of casino urbanism. The presentation will bring forward these aspects in a transnational and global context with building or investment cases from Turkey, Qatar, and Hong Kong.

MERVE BEDIR is an architect based in Hong Kong/Shenzhen. Her ongoing research examines infrastructures of hospitality and mobility. A second line of research follows the human and nonhuman relationships in the context of ecology and cybernetics. Merve Bediris an adjunct assistant professor in Hong Kong University Department of Architecture, Division of Landscape Architecture, and a founding partner of Land and Civilization Compositions. She is also co-founder of Aformal Academy (an experimental school program in Pearl River Delta region), a founding member of Mutfak مطبخ Workshop (focusing on Kitchen as a cultural space in Gaziantep), and a founding member of Center for Spatial Justice in Istanbul. Merve Bedir holds a PhD from Architectural EngineeringDepartment in Delft University of Technology, and a BArch from Middle East Technical University in Ankara.

The event takes place as a part of the program “Get Real!”, a series of online discussions about housing policy and new forms of (co)existence curated by TOK in December 2020 - June 2021 as a part of the 5th season of its ongoing project “Critical Mass”. New season focuses on the emerging and complex issues of housing, real estate, urban development, contemporary and historical housing conditions in post-socialist and neoliberal contexts as well as pressing socio-political and environmental processes in megacities.