Skip to main content

ARCH+ Internship | Blog 1/2018 | Ilkin Akpinar

The Land Question: Policy instruments | Foundation course: From Bauhaus to Silicon Valley

 

Ilkin Akpinar is a Sto Foundation and ARCH+ association scholar. Photo: Sto Foundation/ARCH +

At the moment I'm getting to grips with 'The Land Question', which will be a focal point of the first publication in 2018. In addition to other things, it looks at the question of the relationship of property and the production of space against the backdrop of increasing land speculation and privatisation. Also, how cities deal with "The Land Question" and what kind of policy instruments they develop to help find solutions and alternatives to the current situation. How much is already privatised and what is the situation like in other European countries in comparison with Germany?

Stockholm is a very exciting example, since 70% of the land is publicly owned and the community is subject to heritable building rights. In order to provide an overview, we are currently compiling a glossary that deals with legal, tax-related and property models. For this, I am carrying out significant research and speaking to experts such as Andreas Weeger, research associates representing the Greens in Parliament or parties involved with the "Regenbogenfabrik" alternative project in Berlin Kreuzberg.

In December, I was also able to closely follow the internationally staffed, one-day symposium "project bauhaus. Foundation course: From Bauhaus to Silicon Valley" at the forum HKW (Haus der Kulturen der Welt). It concerns critical inventory and the updating of Bauhaus ideas for the multi-annual undertaking by the ARCH+ organisation. Guests were researchers such as the Stanford professor Fred Turner, as well as artists such as Morehshin Allahyari, Shaina Anand and Paloma Strelitz, architects such as Reinier de Graaf from OMA and scientists Orit Halpern, Denisa Kera and Jussi Parikka.

Ilkin Akpinar

Ilkin Akpinar studied architecture at TU Berlin where, in 2016, she was an undergraduate assistant for Stefanie Bürkle's exhibition project "Migrating Spaces" at the forum HKW (Haus der Kulturen der Welt) in Berlin and the Salt Gallery in Istanbul.