ISTANBUL.- An open call and two-stage evaluation to determine the project for the Türkiye Pavilion in the 20th International Architecture Exhibition has concluded. The Selection Committee, comprising Hülya Ertaş, Bilge Kalfa, Cem Sorguç, Melis Varkal, and Prof. Şebnem Yücel, evaluated 43 applications and selected the project titled ‘Spolia Futures’, curated by ba-be commons – consisting of Başak Eren, Asya Ece Uzmay, Beril Sarısakal Erkent, and Ece Yetim – to be exhibited at the Biennale. The finalist project was chosen from a shortlist of three proposals, each notable for its distinctive content and design ideas.

The Selection Committee explained its reason for selecting the project as follows: ‘‘‘Spolia Futures” exhibition stood out for its strong conceptual framework and its potential to bring spolia techniques specific to the geography of Türkiye into global architectural discourse. The project considers spolia – a method of construction that changes and transforms over time and renews its relevance through the incorporation of new elements – under the categories of coexistence, archiving, slowing down, repair and speculation about the future. The Pavilion, to be developed through research and collaborations with artists, focuses on how spolia will shape the architecture of the future.’

Spolia Futures approaches spolia not merely as a historical practice of reuse, but as a critical architectural method that establishes new connections between materials, ecologies, memory, and social worlds, offering new ways of rethinking architecture in the face of planetary crises. Against the imperial logic of extraction, it reclaims spolia as a regenerative healing practice through which inherited matter activates intersectional methods for a more just planetary future. The exhibition will draw on Türkiye’s cultures of making and repairing to propose a circular, situated, and collective approach to architecture that challenges extractive production models. This approach will be materialised in the exhibition space, inviting visitors to explore, translate, and question the architectural legacies we leave behind.

Commissioned by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), the Türkiye Pavilion at the 20th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is realised with contributions from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Türkiye, and co-sponsored by Schüco Türkiye and VitrA. The Türkiye Pavilion has taken part in the International Architecture Exhibition since 2014, thanks to the acquisition of the permanent venue at Sale d’Armi, Arsenale on the initiation of İKSV and with the support of 21 sponsors.

ba-be commons is a research collective founded by Başak Eren, Asya Ece Uzmay, Beril Sarısakal Erkent, and Ece Yetim, whose collaboration began at the Faculty of Architecture at Istanbul Technical University. Eren graduated in 2015, while the other members completed their architecture degrees in 2016. They later reunited around shared research interests while pursuing academic work across the fields of architectural history and theory, design, and architectural representation at universities across the United States.

Today, Başak Eren is a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design; Asya Ece Uzmay is a PhD candidate at Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP); Beril Sarısakal Erkent is a PhD candidate at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP); and Ece Yetim teaches at the Wentworth Institute of Technology and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Their work explores architectural history and theory, architectural representation, and design research. Their proposal for the Türkiye Pavilion at the 2027 International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Spolia Futures, brings together research they have developed across different countries and institutions over the years into a shared architectural proposition.