What emerged as the students progressed during the year, was their willingness to explore a range of architectural investigations. Often this meant challenging preconceived ideas of simply giving form to ideas, and developing design methodologies and work practices that questioned the notion of a contextual architecture, by constantly investing a range of scenario’s by which we might re-consider the term itself. There is a distinct achronological aspect in the way the projects emerged throughout the year- follow­ing the return from Istanbul with an assortment of ‘bounty’ of found objects, narratives, fragments of journeys, intense interactions and conversations, and sometimes just fleeting memories, the design theses projects were constantly being second-guessed and re-read through these lenses so that the final ‘position’ can rarely ascribed to the normal linearity of the design process or indeed one defining moment in time. Instead the students triangulated themselves against an immeasurable number of chartings that prompted exciting new propositions for Istanbul. Given the diversity and overall quality of each of these proposals, it is necessary that each student gets to illustrate and describe their own project and thesis interests in this book- it would be unfair and also too impractical to try to attempt to highlight any one individual project, being so diverse as they are and the diversity in approach and the reification of individual preoccupations. What one cannot leave to go unnoticed and be impressed by however, is the coming-together of these works in the final exhibition and in this visual dossier. Seeing the works develop each week can be sometimes frustrating- above all one needs a resilience that allows questions to emerge and situate their relevance on an ongoing basis, and ‘enjoy the making of the thing as much as the thing itself’. It is (quite literally) only when the dust gets swept away that we see the final realisation of all the ef­fort, probings, and attitudes that have preoccupied all of us over the course of the year.

Jason M. O’Shaughnessy - ISTANBUL City As Palimpsest

MArch Programme Leader

ISTANBUL City As Palimpsest, publication now available