Marta Marszal - Hot/Cold Architecture

It seems so old-fashioned to force a child to pick a career at 13 years old. As a child growing up in Swidnica, Poland in the 1990s, Marta Marszal had to do just that. Her secondary school class was taken to a career center, where they were shown all the careers available to them and to choose their high school schooling based on those. Marta took this task very seriously (possibly unlike her classmates) and went home to write her possibilities on notecards. She spent days arranging and re-arranging the cards on her bed until just one remained—Architect.

Now working in Istanbul with hotshot design studio, Superpool, Marszal spends her days developing concepts for buildings, exhibitions, mapping projects, graphic design, and materials research, among other things. While this may satisfy her childhood desire to mesh art with math and science, it does not always reinforce her belief that architecture is ultimately about people and analyzing the needs of people.
Despite Istanbul’s European Capital of Culture designation in 2010, most people (those few who have heard of it) do not really understand what an architect is--despite architectural restoration being the focus of the Istanbul 2010 committee. 

The only architect people know by name is Mimar Sinan

Marszal reports that when she was doing her studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, the average person at a bus stop would be able to name at least one living architect or the name of the architect who designed a particular building. In Istanbul, the only architect people know by name is the 16th century Mimar Sinan, whose beautiful Ottoman mosques and hamams inspire continuing generations of architects to come to Istanbul.

Marszal did not come to Istanbul for that reason, however. She was bored in Zurich (who wouldn’t be?)  When she had a chance to do an study-trip outside of Switzerland, she chose Rome. And so did every other student in her program. So by default she ended up in Istanbul.

She welcomed the chaos and liveliness of the street in Istanbul

Within one week of arriving in this city of architectural marvels, she had more friends than she had made previously in her entire time in Zurich. She positively loved the warmness the people here. She welcomed the chaos and the liveliness of the street after the coldness and orderliness of Switzerland. And with that enthusiasm, she applied for a 2-month internship, which led to the employment which has kept her in Istanbul for the past three years.

Marszal notices that in Turkey the field of architecture and the perceptions of it are changing, but slowly. She notes that like in Poland, things get made without architects, without professional builders, or without even realizing that something needs planning at all. But foreign architects continue to stream into Istanbul at a greater rate than ever. Is this because they are inspired by the already existing architecture? Marszal doesn’t think so. She thinks it is probably because they are seeing the commercial opportunities in the city—which is growing economically while the rest of Europe suffers.
 

Less about finding solutions for people and more about making money

And this is exactly what disillusions Marszal about working in Istanbul. While she loves the concept design and varied aspects of her profession, she finds that it is now less about finding solutions for people and more about making money. She is tiring of commercial architecture and would like to be culturally stimulated to and be challenged by more civic projects, which benefit people other than developers.

I would argue that the projects she has worked on, like a map of the dolmuş routes in the city, or applications for foamed concrete DO benefit ‘people’. But I know what she is saying—artistic Istanbul may be becoming too much like where she came from.
 

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