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A Proposal for an Urban Garden, Bursa, Turkey.

Part 2 Project 2000
Yael Brosilovski
University of Nottingham | UK
This project is about fluidity and the feminine. I wanted to address social discrimination against women and the associated prejudice against bodily fluids. I therefore looked at ways of introducing the concept of fluidity, but fluidity with a different twist - one where function becomes secondary to an architectural formal language that grasps fluidity in a more metaphorical way, by means of experience.

Situated within the context of the city of Bursa, Turkey, the proposal is for an urban garden together with a body treatment parlour. The proposal provides an antidote to the hectic masculine urban environment all around,
offering a soothing layer of pleasure and play over the underlying rationality. A sanctuary - A feminine interpretation of sanctuary. A sensual place, a maternal touch, in which the body is emancipated.

Borrowing from Luce Irigaray's poetic writings, 'Elemental Passions' and 'The Forgetting of Air', the project is to be read as a story of relationships - relationships between architectural components, between boundaries and edges, but also between materials, relationships between form and light, between seasonal and daily rhythms - a story of relationships as experienced through feminine eyes.

Yael Brosilovski


The project was situated within the context of a broader theoretical enquiry about the role of architecture in fostering a sensuous correspondence with the world. As Yael herself puts it:'We want to explore architecture like a piece of sensuous art, architecture that desires, feels, listens, looks and touches.' The scheme that evolved - a landscaped retreat within the centre of Bursa in Turkey - sought to articulate a more corporeal, sensuous and fluid approach to form, feminine, perhaps, rather than feminist. In creating this language of forms she sought to challenge the striated masculine space that surrounded the site, to provide a haven of tranquility.

2000
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