While scrolling through X, I came across a sentence by Ali Kaan: “Turks deserve to live not in cramped apartment flats, but in real Turkish houses with courtyards.” At first glance, the sentence may sound a bit romantic, even a bit assertive… Yet there are some sentences that, before proving their truth, awaken a desire to imagine. That’s what it did for me. Suddenly, I found myself in that stone-paved courtyard from the image, standing beside a flowering tree whose shadow fell softly onto the ground, in front of a house whose wooden windows filtered the morning light gently inside. Then I added a garden behind that vision. A well, a divan, a faint sound of water, vines leaning against a stone wall, a bay window above, a hayat in between, a sofa inside… And then I realized: I wasn’t just thinking about a house; I was imagining a way of life.

Then I decided to prepare a detailed article so that everyone could understand the features of Turkish houses. Of course, I started with research. I encountered drawings, terminology, interpretations of old urban fabrics, and a spatial worldview stretching from Safranbolu to Bukhara. And in the end, I saw this more clearly: the Turkish house is not merely an architectural heritage of the past. It is also a thought written into space about how we might live together, how we should perceive, and perhaps even how we can remain human.

In most modern cities today, buildings rise within their parcels with individual ambitions. Each stands independent, sometimes even in rivalry with the others. In the traditional Turkish city, however, the relationship is different. A house considers not only its own comfort but also its neighbor’s light, the street’s shade, and the neighborhood’s air. That is why, in traditional horizontally developed Turkish neighborhoods, there is said to be a sensitivity that can be summarized as: “one house’s shadow should not block another’s sunlight.”

Today, we often discuss housing in terms of square meters, façade, view, number of rooms, kitchen type, and site amenities. Yet the traditional Turkish house asked this question differently. Rather than “how big should a house be,” it focused on what kind of life a house should carry. This small difference actually transforms the entire architectural approach. Because then the structure ceases to be a shell enclosing a person and becomes an organism that accompanies daily rhythms, shapes the relationship with nature, and invisibly preserves the ethics of neighborliness.

When one thinks of a Turkish house, the bay window usually comes to mind first. White plastered walls, wooden beams, deep shadows under the eaves, stone-paved streets, and sometimes high courtyard walls… Yet trying to understand the Turkish house only through its appearance remains incomplete. Because its strength lies partly in an internal logic not immediately visible from the outside. At the center of that logic is a sense of measure. But this measure is not merely mathematical or geometric. It is also about propriety, rights, climate knowledge, and the subtlety of living.

For this reason, when discussing the Turkish house, one must also discuss the city. Because the Turkish house is rarely independent from the street. It is an organic extension of the urban fabric it belongs to. In most modern cities today, buildings rise within their parcels with individual ambitions. Each stands independent, sometimes even in rivalry. In the traditional Turkish city, however, the relationship is different. A house considers not only its own comfort but also its neighbor’s light, the street’s shade, and the neighborhood’s air. That is why, in traditional horizontally developed Turkish neighborhoods, there exists a sensitivity summarized as: “one house’s shadow should not block another’s sunlight.”

When thinking of Turkish houses, one of the first cities that comes to mind is undoubtedly Safranbolu. Interestingly, while writing this piece, I went back to my own photo archive and revisited the day I first saw Safranbolu. I realized that I first visited this city exactly 14 years ago, on April 21, 2012. Despite the time that has passed, the feeling of that first encounter remains vivid. Even in times when the buildings were not presented as spectacularly as today, Safranbolu evoked deep admiration. Because what was impressive was not just the beauty of individual houses, but the measure, calmness, and elegance of the entire fabric.

Looking at settlements like Safranbolu, this becomes even more concrete. As houses settle on slopes, they do not simply compete to capture the best view. Instead of an aggressive logic that blocks each other completely, there is a composition that steps back, layers, and breathes. That is why these houses do not only look beautiful; they also feel fair.

At this point, it is possible to speak of a silent connection between urbanism and morality. Because the Turkish understanding of the city is not merely a physical arrangement to meet housing needs, but the spatial manifestation of the relationship between people and nature.

Streets are also an important part of this system. Narrow streets are often perceived negatively today. Yet in traditional contexts, narrowness does not necessarily mean congestion. On the contrary, narrow streets create shade, protect pedestrians, and establish a human-scale relationship between buildings and people.

Among the most striking façade elements is undoubtedly the bay window. The bay window is the face of the Turkish house extending into the street. Yet this extension is not aggressive; it is measured. It establishes a relationship with the street, expands the view, and enriches spatial perception, while maintaining a delicate balance between public and private life.

The Turkish house is not merely an architectural heritage of the past. It is also a thought written into space about how we might live together, how we should perceive, and perhaps even how we can remain human.

When we step inside, we encounter another world. The Turkish house does not abruptly throw us into its center; it slows us down. This is why the taşlık (entrance hall) is important. It is a transitional layer between outside and inside—neither fully exterior nor interior.

One of the most important concepts of the Turkish house is the “hayat.” Even its name reveals the intention of this architecture. It is not merely an empty space, but a lived space—a semi-open interface where house, courtyard, and daily life meet.

Connected to the hayat, the sofa forms the backbone of the house. It is not just a circulation space but a shared center where family life converges.

In some regions, the eyvan joins this richness of transitional spaces. It plays a crucial role in climate adaptation, providing shade and airflow, while adding rhythm and ceremony to spatial experience.

The arrangement of rooms continues this philosophy. Rooms are not rigidly fixed to single functions but remain flexible, adapting to different uses throughout the day.

The courtyard and garden are where the Turkish house meets landscape. The courtyard is not a decorative addition but an essential part of life—sometimes even its heart.

Material language reflects the same simplicity. Stone provides solidity and coolness on the lower levels, while wood offers flexibility and warmth above.

Perhaps this is why thinking about the Turkish house is not merely historical curiosity. It also raises serious questions about today’s cities: why do we produce so many buildings, yet so few living environments?

Maybe we cannot recreate the exact houses of the past. But we can reinterpret their principles: transitional spaces, semi-open areas, neighborly rights, climate sensitivity, and the integration of landscape.

For me, this is where the Turkish house becomes valuable. It is not a nostalgic object, but a quiet teacher reminding us that another way of living is possible.

• Perhaps we cannot rebuild the same houses, but we can rebuild the same refinement.
• Perhaps we won’t walk the same streets, but we can help streets remember people again.
• Perhaps not every home will have a courtyard, but every life needs a bit of sky, shade, greenery, and a spatial ethic that considers others.

This is what the Turkish house tells me. And perhaps that is why it belongs not only to the past, but also to the future.

When snow falls, the city does not actually change all at once. It simply makes more visible the things it has been hiding all along. A street we normally pass through in haste seems, when covered with a thin layer of white, to return to its own language. The ground falls silent, colors retreat, details leave behind their excess. What remains are lines. And traces.

Perhaps this is the strangest thing about snow: it seems to cover things, but in fact it reveals them.

The city, which in summer disperses almost unnoticed among asphalt, signs, shop windows, and vehicles, becomes readable again with snow. Where people pass, where they stop, which corner is truly used, which staircase only looked good on the drawing, which ramp does not work, which shortcut has already been invented by everyone—all of these suddenly appear. The line drawn by the designer and the line chosen by life appear side by side for the first time on the same white page.

For Those Who Know How To Read It, Snow Is Like A Temporary Sheet Of Carbon Paper Laid Over The City

Between the footprint of a child and the footprint of an adult, there is not only a difference in size. One moves forward by discovering the ground; the other by trying to reach a destination. One sees leaving a mark almost as a game; the other often leaves it without even noticing. That is why, on a snowy morning, streets should be read not only in terms of municipal maintenance, but also in terms of human behavior. Because snow shows the relationship between people and space without decoration. Who ran, who walked cautiously, who moved close to the wall, who searched not for shade but for a pocket protected from the wind—all of it is there.

Some traces are decisive. They move straight ahead. As if the person had chosen long ago where they were going. Other traces are hesitant; short, shifting direction, as if they stopped for a moment and then began again. In some places, two sets of footprints move side by side, then one separates. Elsewhere, small paths merge and become a collective route formed on their own. Those lines that do not exist in plans but that life persistently asks for—snow says them more loudly.

For an urban designer, this image is not something to be underestimated. Because a trace does not only mean a place where a foot has stepped; it means a place that has been chosen.

When snow falls, the city becomes somewhat more democratic as well. The materials that dominate in summer withdraw. Granite, basalt, asphalt, paving stones, curbs… For a while, all of them become equal under the same silence. The ground suspends its class performance for a moment. What becomes visible then is not the cost of the material, but the justice of the space. Where people can walk comfortably, where they can move forward without slipping, where a stroller can pass without getting stuck, good design appears. Where everyone walks around the edges, where traces break apart, where every step turns into a sentence of caution, the deficiency reveals itself.

Snow Is Not Very Merciful To Details Made With Good Intentions But Without Enough Thought

The slope of a ramp may seem acceptable on paper. The riser of a stair may comply with regulations. A paving stone may appear clean and properly placed. But when snow falls, the real effect of those small technical decisions on the human body becomes visible. Sometimes design reveals its most fragile state exactly where it appears most aesthetic. Because winter does not care much for display. It wants a quick response to a cold body.

That is why, in cold-climate cities, snow is not merely a meteorological event; it is also a spatial critique.

There is also the matter of sound. Snow leaves traces not only on the ground, but also in the air. It absorbs part of the city’s noise and softens its edges. Engine sounds arrive from farther away, footsteps are heard more fully, children’s laughter rises more clearly. When it snows, one feels that the harshness of the city has retreated a little. As if the city has forgotten its own roughness for a few hours. Yet within this temporary politeness, another truth is hidden: not every silence is peace. Sometimes the city silenced by snow also shows how weak public life has already become. If no one goes outside, if benches have long since lost their function, if the street has been reduced to compulsory passage, whiteness makes that emptiness even more visible.

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Can You Hear the Character of a City?

Still, a trace is something hopeful. Because every trace carries the sentence, “Someone passed through here.” The first footprint appearing on a narrow neighborhood road one morning is a small sign that the space is still alive. The trace of a child going to school, the trace of a person hurrying to work, the cautious step of an elderly person going out early to buy bread, the cheerful zigzags of two friends turning toward an empty lot to play… Together, they say this: “The city is not made only of buildings; it is also made of repeated everyday courage.“

Perhaps this is why looking out the window when snow falls is not merely watching a view. A person also watches, in a way, how time writes itself onto the ground. Because what we call a trace may appear momentary, but it is actually connected to memory. A child does not forget, even years later, the place where they first sledded in a park on a winter morning. An adult carries with them the embarrassment of slipping and falling on a street, or the brief moment when their inner world grew calm while watching the snow from a bench. Space accumulates traces not only on the ground, but also inside people.

At this point, a scene I remember from NTV’s documentary series Long Live Architecture comes to mind: an architect, wanting to read people’s real axes of use, distributes colorful umbrellas on a rainy day to the crowd getting off the ferry that feeds the city, and then observes where that crowd disperses. While researching my article, I learned that this is a method used in architecture known as “desire paths” (desire path). The documentary made me think this: Sometimes, to understand a city, one must look at flow more than drawing, at bodily orientation more than the plan. Snow, however, is an almost cost-free, spontaneous, and even more honest version of this for the urban designer. The orientation made visible by colorful umbrellas in the rain appears directly as footprints in the snow; where people turn, where they shorten the route, which void they turn into a path, which designed route they quietly reject—all of it writes itself on the white ground. That is why snow is not only a seasonal cover, but also a free field note revealing the actual use of the city.

Some cities see snow only as a burden that must be cleared away. Others hear what it teaches. Where does the wind cause snow to accumulate? Where does shade keep the ground icy all day? Where does a row of trees protect walking? Where, and what, does a child play in winter? Where does the sun make a small square livable? All of these become more clearly understood in winter. The city gives one of its most honest lessons precisely when it is dressed in white.

– Because snow measures not form, but behavior.

– And the trace is the most human result of that measurement.

Perhaps a good city is one that allows traces to pass over it. Not only one that looks clean, orderly, symmetrical, and controlled; but one that has been walked, used, lingered in, and adopted. A city where people do not hesitate to step on the ground, where children are not afraid to extend their route, where older adults can move without having to take shelter along the walls—in short, a city where life itself can find room.

Snow melts. The trace disappears. But good design begins exactly here: where we can read what has vanished as data, the passerby as a witness, and winter as a kind of litmus test…

Because sometimes the character of a city becomes most visible when snow falls. And sometimes the conscience of a city is hidden in who is able to leave traces behind…

Finally, I would like to close with our esteemed poet Ahmet Telli’s poem titled Traces In The Snow:

“His voice remained in the wind, his gaze in the depth of a well
His smile, a branch of weeping willow…
Sometimes he wakes from his own voice
And trembles at his own voice.

There was snow on the roads he took
And the footprints had remained just as they were
I looked, everything was as I had left it
Only your absence had been added to life.”

Over the years, in different cities, sometimes in the middle of a walk, sometimes on the way back home, and sometimes simply because I could not bear to let that moment slip away, the small visual notes I kept led me again and again to the same thought: A city is assumed to be seen first, but in fact it is heard first. Sometimes beneath the lights slowly spreading over the night along a shoreline, sometimes in the hum resting on the shoulder of a crowded street, and sometimes on a morning when snow softens everything into silence, the city takes the task of reading its character away from the eye and hands it to the ear. The eye selects many things according to its taste. The ear, however, is less fond of ornament and less easily deceived.

To get to know a city, it is not always enough to lift your head and look at building facades; sometimes you need to fall silent and listen for a while. Because what we call a city is not made only of stone, asphalt, trees, buildings, and voids. It is also the way these things speak to one another. Roads have a sound, the wind touching a pavement has a sound, crowds have a rhythm they organize within themselves. Even silence has a sound; at times it brings peace, at times unease, and at times it suggests that public life there has thinned out, withdrawn, begun to recede. From the sound of a city, one can read far more than expected about what it values, whom it places at the center, and whom it leaves at the margins.

The eye selects many things according to its taste. The ear, however, is less fond of ornament and less easily deceived.

Images can often be beautified. A square, when photographed from a good angle, may appear more orderly, more spacious, more inviting than it truly is. But sound is not so easily polished. Where the sound of engines dominates, the pedestrian is secondary. Where horns, brakes, exhaust, and a constant sense of haste are always audible, that city has been built around speed; not for people, but for flow. By contrast, where footsteps, brief encounters, distant children’s laughter, water, birds, and a light breeze can all exist without drowning one another out, another idea of the city begins to emerge. There, life is not merely continuing; it is, to some degree, being lived.

Coastal cities are especially interesting in this regard. Cities founded by the sea are often described only through their scenery. Yet the real story is often hidden in layers of sound. The relationship between waves and hard pavement, the faint metallic trace left by a bicycle wheel on the promenade, fragments of conversation from people sitting on benches, the slowed rhythm of walking a few steps away… These reveal the public life of that city. There is a clear difference between the sound of a person walking along the shore and the sound of a vehicle passing at speed: one settles into the city, the other cuts through it. No matter how crowded a waterfront may be, if that crowd can establish an acoustic balance without suffocating itself, then public life there may have been formed not in a crude way, but in a mature one.

Crowded streets, meanwhile, reveal another face of the city. When you enter a major pedestrian axis, the first thing you usually notice is not the architecture but the density. That density has its own sound. Footsteps overlap, the call of a street vendor rises briefly above the rest, storefront conversations blend into the flow, the sound of rails or tire friction draws a thin line through it all. In such places, the city becomes more anonymous. A person becomes invisible within the crowd while at the same time belonging to it. Perhaps this is one of the oldest contradictions of the big city: Crowds give a person both loneliness and belonging. Through sound, the city both pulls you in and leaves you with a certain weariness toward people.

The character of a city lies not only in how it looks, but also in what it compels its people to hear.

Marketplaces, bazaars, and semi-covered commercial spaces make the social backbone of a city clearly audible. There, sound is rougher but more alive. The sound of bargaining, calls, rustling bags, the noise of wet ground underfoot, all rub the class layers of everyday life against one another beneath the same roof. These are not sterile spaces; perhaps they are a little tiring, but they are real. Because what is heard there is not life in its arranged version, but life in something close to its raw form. Sometimes the character of a city is understood most clearly precisely here: where it is not perfect, where it loosens control a little, where it allows everyday life to compose its own music.

The sound of youth in a city also matters. Because young people are not only users of public space; they are a social force that gives it tempo. Skateparks, rollerblading areas, walls, steps, railings, open concrete surfaces… Places that the adult mind often sees as leftover spaces can become the liveliest stages of the city for young people. The sound of wheels, laughter, that brief silence between trying and falling, the rhythm a group of friends creates among themselves… These may appear disorderly, yet they are in fact an acoustic declaration of the right to exist in the city. If the sound of youth is overly suppressed in a city, that city may be orderly, but it is also a little old. Slightly noisy, somewhat scattered, and at times filled with metallic echoes, these sounds show that public life is still open.

The sound of children is similarly decisive, though it is a more fragile sign. If children’s voices cannot be heard in a city, that does not simply mean children are indoors. Perhaps the street is no longer safe for them. Perhaps speed has increased too much. Perhaps adults have occupied public space so completely that children have been compressed into small, designated areas. Yet children’s voices are among the signs of how open a city remains to the future. Because the sound of children is unplanned, a little startled, a little unruly; and precisely for that reason, it is a powerful proof that public space is alive. As the city is built more and more for the frictionless passage of adults, it loses its voice; or rather, it collapses into a single sound: the sound of a system that functions, but does not live.

In historic cities, this issue becomes even more layered. There are places where the sound of water and the horn of a ferry, seagulls and human crowds, the call to prayer and engine noise, slopes and the shoreline all exist within the same acoustic texture. Such cities are not merely large; they are polyphonic. And this polyphony does not always mean harmony. Sometimes it means collision, sometimes overlap, and sometimes one sound suppressing another. Yet even so, that layered structure keeps the city’s memory alive. Because history does not survive only in stone buildings; it also survives in regimes of sound. The sound of a port city is not the same as that of a steppe city. The sound of a commercial center does not carry the same weight as that of a border city.

When night falls, the sound of cities changes, but it does not disappear. In fact, some cities reveal their true identity most clearly at night. Seen from above, lights create the first impression of silence; yet that silence is deceptive. Every light carries an interior life. The hum of a road not visible in the distance, conversations rising from a side street, mechanical sounds from the port, the movements of a hilly city folding into itself… Night does not reduce sound; it makes it invisible. Perhaps that is why, when we look at cities at night, our ears work a little more through imagination. We look at the lights, but in truth we think about what we might be hearing.

In winter cities, sound takes on an entirely different character with the season. When snow falls, the city suddenly ceases to be the same city. The echoes of hard surfaces soften, the sound of wheels grows heavier, the sense of distance changes, and footprints and footfall nearly converge. Snow covers acoustics too. That is why winter cities do not always sound calmer; they often sound more withdrawn. They pull people from the outside toward the inside, from the public toward the more private. Yet precisely for that reason, the sound of a city under snow is instructive. Because in that moment, it becomes clearer which sounds remain alive: the scrape of a shovel, a distant engine, short conversations leaking from inside thick coats, the rhythm of someone walking through snow. Winter filters out the city’s unnecessary sounds and reveals its backbone.

But the city is not shaped only by natural sounds and everyday sounds; there are symbolic sounds as well. The relationship between a flag and the wind, the ceremonial moments of a square, the silence surrounding a monument, the acoustic counterparts of historical memory… These are heard less often, yet they sink deeper. A city can sometimes become the sound of a nation, sometimes of a shared memory, sometimes of a feeling carried for a long time. For that reason, to understand a city means not only understanding which sounds are present there, but also which sounds respectfully step back. Silence, no less than sound, is culturally constructed.

When speaking about the sound of cities, it is difficult to ignore the question of class. Because not every neighborhood produces the same sound, or rather, not every neighborhood is exposed to the same sound. Affluent areas may contain a filtered silence, an acoustic softened by trees, and a controlled traffic order. More fragile neighborhoods, by contrast, may live with high speed, hard surfaces, dense traffic, irregular infrastructure, and mechanical noise all at once. The issue here is not merely decibels. The issue is who is forced to live with which sounds all the time. Spatial justice is, in part, acoustic justice. What a child hears when opening the window, which sounds surround an elderly person sitting on a bench, whether a student can hear their own thoughts while walking, all of these are invisible components of the right to the city.

Cities built for the eye attract attention. Cities also imagined for the ear remain in memory.

Some cities wake to the sound of a market, some to ferries, some to trams, some to the heavy hum of traffic. In some, the waterfront in the late afternoon mixes human voices with water; in others, life withdraws as snow begins to settle. Yet in every case the same question remains important: do these sounds crush one another, or do they together form a rhythm of life? A good city is perhaps not a completely silent city. A city that is entirely silent is often either abandoned or over-controlled. The more livable city is one in which the right sounds can exist without smothering one another. A city where children’s voices are not drowned out by horns, where the rhythm of walking is not shattered by engines, where water can truly be heard, where wind can be felt not only in its harshness but in its presence.

In the end, the issue seems to come down to this: The character of a city lies not only in how it looks, but also in what it compels its people to hear. Because sound carries the traces of power, of everyday life, of memory, and of exhaustion. Some cities remain in the ear like a tiring command sentence; others linger in the mind like a melody long after one has left. Perhaps good design is, in part, this: reducing what should not be heard and making room for what should. Cities built for the eye attract attention. Cities also imagined for the ear remain in memory.

Today, let’s take a short break from everything, from all that rushing around and those tiring routines. I want us to step one pace back from the city’s noise and listen to nature’s healing quiet and the whisper of green. Because behind those familiar views we lift our heads to see, a massive time tunnel is hidden—one that pushes the limits of our imagination.

A Journey Through Time

Have you ever paused under a magnolia tree and really looked at it?

Not just saying “how beautifully it bloomed”… but a little more carefully?

Those large, almost porcelain-like flowers…

Thick and resilient textures…

A feeling as if it belongs not to today, but to another time…

This strange familiarity is not for nothing. Magnolia is far more than an elegant ornament of modern gardens. It is a lineage that has persisted on Earth since the ages when dinosaurs roamed.

Around 95 million years ago, when there were no bees yet, flowering plants were only just stepping onto the stage. Magnolia was one of the oldest actors in that scene. That showy bloom we meet today in a park, along a campus path, or in a home garden is, in fact, a living witness that has reached us from the early pages of evolutionary history.

Maybe that is why, when we look at a magnolia, a feeling appears inside us that is hard to explain. We are not only looking at it. We are witnessing the depth of time. Because magnolia carries the quiet but stubborn memory of the past.

Fossil records prove that the ancestors of these plants emerged in periods when the climate in the Northern Hemisphere was much warmer and then spread across a wide geography. As a member of the Magnoliid group—often considered among the ancestral branches of modern flowering plants—magnolias are one of the oldest representatives of plant evolution.

So how did this delicate flower survive and reach today while the world around it collapsed and rebuilt itself again and again, while ice ages froze continents?

Before Bees: Evolution Shaped for Beetles

The most striking truth in magnolia’s story begins in that lonely period when bees had not yet appeared on the world stage. With the most faithful friends of flowers absent, magnolias had to develop their pollination strategies according to the creatures available at the time: beetles. Because of this primitive partnership, magnolia flowers do not produce the nectar that attracts bees. Instead, they offer beetles protein-rich pollen or sugary secretions. Their thick and fleshy petals are a near-perfect armor developed to prevent those large and clumsy insects of the time from chewing and damaging the flower.

Tepals: An Early Form of Flower Evolution

When you look at a modern flower, you usually see green sepals and colorful petals. But magnolias belong to an ancient period when this separation had not yet formed. The floral envelope of magnolias consists of parts that carry the characteristics of both structures together and are called tepals. In addition, the reproductive organs of the flower are arranged not in rings as in modern flowers, but in a spiral pattern on a cone-like axis—one of the clearest signs of their primitive nature that branched off before the familiar monocot or dicot lines.

Reading Temporal Landscapes with Magnolia

The current distribution of magnolias is like a map that tells us about continental movement and climate history. Fossil records show that magnolias once lived in a broad, continuous forest belt covering North America, Europe, and Asia. But as global cooling and ice ages wiped out the European species, magnolias survived only in East Asia and the Americas, turning into disconnected populations.

In landscape design, the magnolia tree—with its evergreen leaves and enormous flowers—creates the effect of a “natural sculpture,” adding an aristocratic stance and a timeless depth to gardens.

Memory, Resilience, and Design

The magnolia tree is not only a biological being; it is also a powerful symbol of cultural memory. In China it represents purity and “Yin” energy, in Japan nobility, and in the American South a certain stance of character. It also carries a medicinal memory. Its bark and buds have been used for thousands of years in traditional medicine as calming and healing agents. Able to withstand harsh climatic conditions and air pollution, and able to keep its form without needing pruning, magnolia holds both fragility and a “steel-like” resilience within the same trunk—one of nature’s most successful designs.

Now let’s return to today, perhaps to the tree in that park near your home. When you pause beside a magnolia tree and breathe in that magnificent fragrance, you will actually be smelling not just a flower, but millions of years of history, an evolutionary victory, and nature’s resilience. It is one of the most beautiful legacies left to us from the world of dinosaurs.

The next time you touch a magnolia leaf, feel a 95-million-year-old secret pulsing at your fingertips.

We’re wedged between enormous slabs of concrete. Between facades that are tall, glossy, perfectly smooth… Even the sound of children sometimes disappears without an echo—because there’s no void left to carry that echo. There was a time when we thought what we called “the city” was the street, and what we called the street was life itself. Now the city feels more like a corridor we simply pass through; a circulation diagram that links enclosed parking garages to elevators, to security gates. So where do children fit into this diagram? At the edge of the map—off to the side, in a corner that has been “deemed suitable.” And of course on signs as well: “Children’s Park.” How easily we say it. Park. Play. Child. Three words, and we soothe our conscience.

There’s little greenery left for us. If any remains, it’s only a tiny trace at the edge of our sight. If it remains, it remains in a pot on the windowsill. Sometimes it survives as the make-up of a housing complex landscape: two strips of lawn, three stunted trees, and, in the middle, a noble olive tree… a layout that looks “well-kept,” yet feels like plastic the moment you touch it. Children touching soil, getting to know mud, being able to bend and twist a branch without snapping it, feeling the weight of stones in their hands, standing at the edge of a pit and saying “if water filled this, it would become a lake”… These have turned into luxuries of the city. And what I call a luxury is, in fact, the most basic human state: to make contact, to explore, to try, to fall, to get back up. For a child, play is exactly that. Yet we sterilized play. We packaged play. We delivered play like a product that comes with a warranty certificate (See Figure 1).

Worse still: as we reduced green space, we narrowed play as well. Cities grew, childhood shrank. I could phrase that sentence like a poet, but this is not about poetry; it’s about a choice we repeat every single day. Huge projects, huge roads, huge interchanges. “Crazy projects” everywhere, and it’s as if we’ve all gone a little mad, becoming fanatics of capitalism… And what’s set aside for children in our cities is usually “leftover pieces.” A gap is found on the plan; into it go two swings, a slide, and a brightly colored surface… Then comes the line: “We did it for the children.” It gets marketed as a prestige project. Is the child’s right only as large as whatever is left over after our own comfort? While the city’s most expensive square meters are reserved for cars, billboards, and shopfronts, the place that falls to children is often a patch with no shade, no protection from the wind; a space that turns to ice in winter and burns in summer.

Creativity Needs Uncertainty

The presence of a park doesn’t prove that everything has been done right. As the number increases, justice doesn’t necessarily increase. In fact, sometimes as the number goes up, the content becomes even more uniform. The same play set, the same color, the same plastic… One almost wishes the system produced the children in factories too: copy-and-paste children… as if the same childhood is being lived in every neighborhood. Yet what we call play is the child rebuilding the world in their own language. A stick becomes a sword, stones become “money,” a slope is declared a “mountain,” a shrub is named a “forest.” Creativity needs a bit of uncertainty. It needs a bit of emptiness. It needs flexibility, so the child can write their own scenario. But when we build “play areas” for children, we often impose the “play scenario” as well. Slide here, swing there, spin here, get off there… And that’s it. The play ends. The child doesn’t end, but the play ends.

We can talk about this as a “design” issue. Yes, a design issue. But the real issue is where our heart and our mind choose to stand in the city. Who are we building the city for? For the car, or for the human? And when we say “human,” do we also mean the child, the most fragile form of being human? How does a child take part in the city? How does a child read the city? A city designed at an adult’s eye level turns into a huge sense of unfamiliarity in a child’s world. The curb feels too high, speed frightens, noise drowns things out, the crowd crushes.The child becomes a guest in the city. And even being a guest has a time limit. After a while, the feeling of “home” fades. That’s when the street stops being the child’s street; the street becomes only a line you pass through.

We lost the streets. And as we lost the streets, we lost play as well. That’s why we took refuge in children’s parks. We replaced the street with the park. But the park was never the same thing as the street; it only made sense together with the street. Going to the park used to be a ritual; something would happen on the way. Now the park is not a destination, but a compensation. A place we take a child just so “they can get outside.” In winter, we can’t take them anyway. In the rain, we can’t take them anyway. In the evening, we can’t take them anyway. The child becomes like a being whose life in the city is restricted according to the seasons. Yet what we call a season is, for a child, a learning ground: the sound of the wind, the scent of a flower, the texture of a leaf, the warmth of the sun. We brought the seasons indoors too. We handed the child’s relationship with nature over to the light of screens. And then we complain that “the new generation is too digital.” We gave them the digital. We took the soil away.

Defending children’s rights in the city is, in many ways, defending a right to place. The child’s right to belong to the city… And that doesn’t end with building a park. It also means safe streets a child can walk on, routes they can cycle, the possibility of going to school alone, the courage to knock on a friend’s door, a small pocket of “spatial freedom” in the neighborhood that feels like it’s theirs. If these are missing, a park on its own becomes nothing more than consolation. And if a park exists but its content is monotonous and it suffocates creativity, then the park still isn’t enough. Because a child is not only releasing energy; a child is also building meaning. Play is as much a way of thinking as it is physical movement.

When we say that today’s playgrounds kill creativity, some people think we’re exaggerating. “Come on,” they say, “a slide is a slide.” No. A slide is not just a slide. A slide can be an object, yes, but play is not the object itself. Play is the relationship built with the object. If you reduce that relationship to a single template, you narrow the child’s capacity to imagine. In places where everything is predetermined, the child becomes a “user,” not a “maker.” And if they can’t be a maker, they can’t be a maker in the city either. They can’t claim the city as their own. They can’t negotiate with it.They can’t even imagine that a place might change according to them. Yet the city, in essence, is the product of exactly this negotiation: different needs, different speeds, different ages, being able to live together.

Perhaps the heaviest issue is this: we don’t place the child at the center of urban planning; we turn the child into an “afterthought” of urban planning. And then we hang posters that say “child-friendly city.” But a child-friendly city cannot be built with symbols alone. A child-friendly city lives in the language of decisions. It shows up in the lines of the budget. It sits in the priorities of the zoning plan. It is present in the width of a sidewalk, in the placement of a crosswalk, in whether a speed limit can actually be enforced. A child-friendly city allows a child to make mistakes, because a child learns by making mistakes. We, on the other hand, lock the child indoors to bring mistakes down to zero. Yes, mistakes drop to zero; but learning drops to zero as well.

We imagine what is good. A beautiful landscape, good air, a clean environment, and humane people… But we stop at imagining. That is the part that wounds me the most. We don’t call what we imagine a “right.” We don’t call it a “demand.” We don’t call it a “struggle.” As if what is good will come to us on its own. Yet the city doesn’t become better on its own. The city leans toward where the powerful choose to stand. A child is powerless. A child doesn’t vote. A child doesn’t generate rent. A child doesn’t increase the value of a plot of land; in fact, to some, a child “produces noise.” That’s why defending children’s rights is also, in a way, speaking against “power.” It means unsettling things a little. It means being able to say, “Just because it has always been this way doesn’t mean it has to stay this way.”

As Mehmet Emin Daş, I don’t think this is only an aesthetic debate. Landscape architecture is not simply about planting trees; landscape architecture should also be a representative of spatial justice that organizes life. A child’s right in the city should be one of the most fundamental concerns of landscape. Because landscape builds what is public, and what is public is the place where a child ties themselves to the future. If the child becomes invisible in public space, then an adult who will defend the public in the future doesn’t really grow up either. A society whose childhood has been narrowed ends up narrowing its tomorrows too.

So what are we going to do? Will we talk about the number of parks again? About square meters again? Of course we have to measure; what we don’t measure can’t be managed. But alongside measurement, we also need a scale of conscience. In every neighborhood, a high-quality green space that a child can reach within five minutes… I’m choosing the word “quality” very deliberately. Quality means shade, safety, maintenance, seasonal usability, material variety, the presence of natural elements, opportunities for free play, contact with water and soil, and the pedagogical ability to manage small risks. Quality means allowing a child to build themselves. A play space shouldn’t offer only equipment; it should also offer elements that generate scenarios: loose materials (stones, sticks, pinecones), topography, small mounds, hiding corners, vegetative texture, and surfaces that change with the seasons. Spaces that are too sterile, too smooth, too “disciplined” don’t make the child safer; they make the child more fragile.

Increasing green space is not only a matter of “how many trees” either. Green space should be imagined as a network, like a living web. Parks shouldn’t be islands; they should be life corridors that connect to one another. A child should be able to walk from one place to another.

And there is also the language of playgrounds… We often give children brightly colored equipment, yet we offer them a world that is intellectually grey. A play space should invite a child’s imagination; it shouldn’t say, “Here, you can only do this.” Design should increase the child’s questions: “What is this?”, “Where does this lead?”, “How do I use this?”, “What happens if I flip it over?” These questions are the first lessons of urban literacy in a child’s mind. Yet we take urban literacy away from the child from the very beginning (See Figure 4).

Perhaps the simplest, yet most effective starting point is this: listening to the child. Learning what play is from children themselves. Letting go of the adult habit of declaring, “This is what play is.” Trying a play street in the neighborhood. Lowering traffic speed during certain hours of the week. Reconfiguring a street according to the child’s body and imagination. Play shouldn’t be confined to the park. Play should spill out into the street. Because the street is the heart of the city. A city without a heart is nothing but an order of concrete.

Sometimes I find myself thinking: when we imagine what is good… maybe what is good is actually something we remember. It existed before. Autumn existed, summer existed, orange existed. Children’s knees were scraped, but their eyes were bright. Now the knees are clean, and the eyes are tired. Somewhere along the way, we did something wrong. Can we still fix it? Maybe. But first, we need to say one sentence honestly: we, with our own hands, narrowed children’s right to the city. And what we narrowed, we will have to widen again. No one will do it in our place.

Like good bread… a good city also takes labor. A good city is a future earned honestly. A city built with children in mind is not only better for children; it is better for everyone. Because traffic slowed down for a child is safer for an older person too. Shade increased for a child is cooler for an adult as well. Greenery multiplied for a child is everyone’s breath. Defending a child’s right to the city is, in the end, defending the right to life itself.

And I don’t want to leave this right to “one day.” Because childhood doesn’t wait. Childhood can’t be postponed. Childhood is lived today. If it is taken from us today, it won’t come back tomorrow.

(All photographs were taken by the author.)

A symphony cannot be made with a single note. Spring does not arrive with a single flower. You cannot claim that “public life” has been saved with one well-designed square. This question of repetition can look like a technical “scaling up” problem; yet in truth, it leans on something sociological: Collective behavior is shaped not by isolated examples, but by patterns that multiply. People see something once and call it “interesting”; by the third time, they begin to “get used to it”; by the tenth encounter, they internalize it as “this is how this city is.” Cities work a bit like that: a single project is a story; multiplying projects become culture.

Architects, landscape architects, urban planners… From time to time, all of us carry the weight of good ideas that remain in the “minority.” A bold project gets built, the visuals are splashed everywhere, it’s talked about intensely for a while—and then everyday life returns to its own rhythm. At that point, you can’t help thinking, “What did I fail to do?” Yet in most cases, what’s missing is not the quality of the design, but the power of repetition. The absence of repetition is the city’s greatest forgetfulness. And that forgetfulness comes back to the designer as “failure,” even though a city does not learn by seeing something only once.

Why Is the Majority a Design Material?

One of the most valuable reminders from the field known as the sociology of architecture is this: Space is not only designed; it is lived, imitated, and sometimes quietly rejected. People learn how to walk on a sidewalk, how to sit in a park, where a parent positions themselves in a playground—less from “written rules” and more from repeated practices. If the designer does not align with these practices, design eventually remains as mere decoration.

That is why thinking about the majority in design is not “trying to please the majority”; it is about building a language that can touch the majority’s repetitive behaviors. The mere existence of a bike lane does not create a cycling culture in a city. But a network that connects neighborhood to neighborhood—repeatedly establishing the school–park–market axis—eventually produces the perception of a “cycling city.” The same is true for children’s playgrounds: a single outstanding playground looks great on Instagram and makes for good political material; but for a child, the feeling of a safe city emerges when all playgrounds work with “similar qualities.” Trust is not a singular object; it is a repeated experience.

Let’s think of it this way: Snow that falls once is a “view.” But snow that keeps falling for days, layering on top of itself, is “winter.” A city’s character works the same way; a single implementation creates a view, while repetition creates a season. If we want design to become a “season,” we have to take the majority into account: multiple repetitions, continuity, a maintenance routine, institutional ownership—and even a bit of stubbornness.

Here, the designer’s field of empathy expands. Because many designers want to convince everyone that they have saved the world with “a single powerful project.” Yet the city is not persuaded; the city slowly gets used to things. And getting used to something is, for the most part, a product of repetition.

The City Likes “Series”

Cities live through collective memory. A city comes to accept as “natural” the things it has done again and again in the past. In our cities, the problem is often this: something is done once, and then it remains the “first and only.” Being first and only can carry a kind of romantic pride, but it does not build a sustainable language. There is a big difference between saying “we have it too” and saying “we have this culture.”

Sometimes, the design world also falls into a kind of “novelty fetish.” Every project wants to act as if it has never been done before. That flatters the designer’s ego, but the city’s learning mechanism asks for the opposite: encountering something familiar again, in a different place. The city likes “series.” And that is not a bad thing. Just as a chorus repeats in a piece of music and we catch the emotion in that repetition, cities also need certain choruses. Pedestrian priority, shading, seating-and-rest bands, child-scale details… These are the chorus. When the chorus repeats, it doesn’t simplify the song; it makes the song something people can claim as their own—something they can memorize.

We can see this most clearly in something very simple: wayfinding behavior. If, in a city, directional signage, the lighting language, and sidewalk materials keep changing, people have to “relearn” each time—and they get tired. But if the language is consistent, people move faster, feel more at ease, and the city becomes “familiar” to them. This is how design relates to the majority: producing trust through familiarity.

My Claim: “Let There Be Ornamental Crabapples Everywhere”

Years ago, after seeing the Ornamental Crabapple and ornamental pear trees planted opposite each other along Cumhuriyet Avenue, an idea came to my mind. With that idea, I repeatedly posted the following sentence—quite boldly—on Twitter to the Erzurum Metropolitan Municipality mayor of the time (Ahmet Küçükler): “Ornamental crabapple trees should be planted everywhere in this city.” When I say this in a conversation, some people smile; some say “you’re exaggerating”; and some ask a fair question: “why a single species?” My concern is not to reduce botanical diversity; it is to weave a city’s visual–scent–seasonal memory through one strong motif. In a place like Erzurum—where the climate is harsh, winter lasts long, and the color palette hovers for months between grey and white—having spring felt through a sudden burst of red blossoms is genuinely valuable. Ornamental crabapples (Malus species) can stage that burst; at a small scale, yet with a large effect, they can function almost like an “urban signature.”

Ornamental crabapple stays on stage not only with its blossoms, but also with its fruit. Even after flowering ends, the small fruits provide visual continuity; they attract birds; and with fruits that can remain on the branches even in winter, they leave a “trace of life.” On Cumhuriyet Avenue, it has already been planted together with ornamental pear trees. Now imagine starting to see this plant again and again—along Erzurum’s wide boulevards, in neighborhood streets, around schools, near playgrounds, and within mass-housing landscapes. Not for one year, but for five years, ten years… That is when the ornamental crabapple becomes not just a tree, but an “urban memory.”

The core of my claim is this: the character of cities is often built not through a single good idea, but through that idea multiplying. In Erzurum, the ornamental crabapple repeats—again and again and again. After a while, people start describing spring as “ornamental crabapple season.” Children memorize those blossoms on their way to school. Photographers choose locations around them. Café names, boutique brand packaging, and municipal posters borrow the motif. This is a kind of “urban imitation economy.” Here, imitation is not negative; it is the engine of cultural production.

Looking with Empathy at the Question: “Why Don’t We Have Something Like Japan’s Cherry Blossom Festival?”

When people talk about Japan’s cherry blossom festivals (hanami), they tend to swing between two extremes: either we romanticize it (“they do it so beautifully”), or we dismiss it altogether (“it wouldn’t work here”). Both are easy sentences. The harder thing is to build empathy and see the mechanism.

In Japan, cherry blossom is not merely an aesthetic event; it is a public ritual repeated for years. That ritual is sustained by a finely woven network of understandings—between government and residents, between local businesses and park management, between the media and everyday life. For a festival to “exist,” it is not enough simply to plant trees; regular maintenance of those trees, tracking the flowering period, a more flexible approach to public-space management, the organization of safety and cleanliness, and even people considering it normal to “be there” during that time are all required. And that normalization, again, is a product of repetition.

In our cities, however, the situation is often this: something gets done, but ownership across institutions is not clearly established. The rhythm of the parks department, the culture department, the transport unit, and the security unit does not really meet. For a festival to be continuous, it needs to be held “every year on the same dates, with the same seriousness”; here, we often have to start from scratch each year. Starting over is exhausting. And where exhaustion sets in, the festival becomes “a one-off event.”

There is also the issue of climate, maintenance, and spatial continuity. Cherry blossom season is brief, but it is a brief period people expect. Here, flowering can sometimes be a surprise; sometimes frost hits; sometimes maintenance is delayed; sometimes pruning is done incorrectly. When people do not develop the confidence that “it will happen this year as well,” the ritual breaks. When the ritual breaks, the festival remains at the level of a poster. And a poster does not build a city; a poster only announces something.

Right here, a more realistic question emerges for our cities: “Instead of imitating the culture of cherry blossoms, can we derive a repeatable flowering ritual from within our own climate and urban memory?” My insistence on ornamental crabapples in Erzurum is nourished, in part, by this question. Because ornamental crabapple can speak with Erzurum’s reality—not with the romance of cherry blossoms, but with Erzurum’s wind, cold, wide avenues, long winter, and strong sun.

Positioning the Flowering Crabapple as an Element of Urban Character

Cities are sometimes remembered by a scent. Sometimes by a color. Sometimes by a taste. Designers usually focus on the visual language; yet urban character is something multi-sensory. What the ornamental crabapple offers here is not merely a “flower”; it can function like a package—given a bit of intent, a bit of organization, and a bit of repetition._

The scent of ornamental crabapple blossoms (yes—that lightly sweet scent that sometimes feels almost like “clean air”) could become an urban signature. Small-scale initiatives inspired by this scent could be imagined: cologne, soap, candles, room fragrances… These need not be designed as tourist trinkets, but rather as more refined “city mementos.” Just as Oltu stone carries an identity in Erzurum, ornamental crabapple could carry identity from a softer angle. Moreover, products like these bring local producers and designers to the same table; this is exactly where the sociology of design comes to life.

The question of a mascot is often underestimated, but I think it is a very “public” tool. When a city has a child-oriented face—one that makes people smile—it softens urban belonging. Creating a character based on the ornamental crabapple fruit (for instance, a small red apple figure—wearing a scarf in winter, a hat in summer…) may sound simple; yet as it is repeated in school activities, municipal children’s festivals, and playground wayfinding, it gradually turns into a symbol. A symbol keeps memory alive.

The festival dimension is the most critical part: a festival should not be a one-off celebration; it should be a fixed knot point in the city’s calendar. Imagine something like an “Ornamental Crabapple Month.” Not only concerts, but also walking routes, photo frames, jewelry, perfumes, drawing workshops for children, guided photobotanical tours led by landscape professionals, gastronomy workshops… A program that repeats every year gradually becomes “the ritual of our spring.” At that point, the role of designers is not only to draw spaces, but to design programs, to design experiences, and even to stage a kind of urban scenography.

I think the gastronomy part could be the most enjoyable section… The fruit of the ornamental crabapple may not be directly suitable for the table, but it is powerful as inspiration: apple-themed flavors, experiments with apple vinegar, local reinterpretations with an ornamental-crabapple theme, even trials like “ornamental crabapple pickles”… The aim here is not to eat the biological material as it is, but to help the motif spread throughout the city. If the motif spreads, the city gains character. That character is more lasting than a tourism brochure, because it seeps into everyday life.

And let me emphasize again: none of this “happens” within a single year. That is the point. The point is to multiply the same idea—to repeat the same language. To have design, governance, civil society, and local businesses play the same melody, each with different instruments.

To Be Effective Is, in Part, a Matter of Patience—and of Working in Series

Sometimes we want to define ourselves through a single “icon project.” We want that project to stand like a sculpture—seen by everyone, applauded by all… But cities are less like sculptures and more like walks. In a walk, rhythm matters. And what builds rhythm is repetition. A city being child-friendly, a city being pedestrian-friendly, a city’s “spring” being remembered… These are not built through singular miracles, but through small truths that multiply.

That is why I like the ornamental crabapple idea in Erzurum. A little romantic, yes. A little like a dream, yes. But also very realistic: choosing one tree and stitching it into the city’s veins again and again simplifies and strengthens the city’s language. Rather than copying a cherry blossom festival one-to-one, it feels more genuine to draw a flowering culture from within our own climate. In our cities—or in our lives—many of the things we say “don’t work” often don’t work simply because they were tried only once. They don’t work because they weren’t repeated. They don’t work because they never reached the majority.

Perhaps the quietest yet strongest question in design is this: How many more times am I willing to say this idea? Across how many more streets am I willing to repeat it? For how many more years can I keep walking after the same small sentence?

The city takes that answer seriously—whether we notice it or not…

We often see the city “from above.” From maps, plans, screens… And then from within life itself: from behind the steering wheel, from the middle of the sidewalk, from an adult’s eye level. Everything has a name, a measurement, an explanation. But the truth is this: the city is understood through empathy. And a child’s body speaks an entirely different language inside it.

The first time I truly noticed this, I wasn’t preparing a presentation, and I wasn’t writing a thesis. I was walking with my son. My hand was holding his; I’m used to walking fast, he isn’t. I decide quickly, saying “we’ll go this way,” but he sees everything, one by one. While I was complaining about my son’s slowness as I grabbed his arm and pulled him along, his mother warned me. So I started watching him. His eyes catch on the height of a single curb stone. On a surface where the pavement has been torn up, he points at a puddle and says, “Dad, there’s a pool in front of us.” He hides behind the trunk of a tree. He listens carefully to the sound the wind makes in the branches. What is ordinary to me becomes, for him, sometimes a small adventure, sometimes a small fear.

“95 cm” stops being just a number for me here. It becomes the height from which a child looks at the world… around waist level. And when you look from there, the city changes all at once. What we call “narrow” can feel too wide and too exposed to them. What we call a “safe” sidewalk can make them feel as if they are walking on the roadway. What we call a “connector road” can feel like a river that is hard to cross. (See: Urban95)

The way children experience the city is fundamentally different from the way adults do; at the center of this difference lies a strong drive to explore. A child approaches first, touches, tries; they often learn the boundary not from a warning sign, but from lived experience. For this reason, in places where children spend time, safety should not be treated as a technical measure added later, but as a basic quality the space must carry from the very beginning. Because for a child, an unsafe detail a slippery surface, a dark corner, a loose part does not only create physical risk; it also interrupts curiosity and teaches withdrawal. Seen from 95 cm, the city stops being an open field for exploration and turns into a sequence of obstacles that must be crossed carefully. That is why, in child-oriented spaces, safety should not be read as the opposite of freedom; on the contrary, it should be read as a precondition for exploration and for participation in public life.

You come to realize something: a child reads the city not only with “logic,” but also with the senses. Through sound, vibration, light, slipperiness, smell, hardness… For example, when I cross a road, I mostly check whether traffic is flowing. My son sometimes says, “The cars are very angry.” It’s not a technical sentence, but it’s accurate. Because in his body, when speed and noise come together, they feel “angry.” In some places the light glares into his eyes; in others the wind hits like a slap. Especially in winter: the ground hardens, corners turn to ice, pits where water collects and freezes overnight… Things that don’t slow an adult down can cut off a child’s courage.

And there’s something else: we adults usually assume the city is something “finished.” A child doesn’t. For a child, a wall is not a boundary; it is the idea of climbing. A puddle is not a problem; it is an experiment. Curb stones are not a line; they are a balancing game. A child keeps testing the possibilities inside the city. Maybe that’s why, when you walk with a child, something in you feels unsettled. The city, on one hand, is alive, inviting, calling you in; on the other hand, it is strangely hard, constantly saying, “Don’t touch.”

In the end, it always comes back to the same question: For whom do we consider the city “normal”? Whose walking speed is normal? Whose stride length is normal? Whose field of view is normal? In plans, projects, and even in our everyday decisions, we often take our own body as the measure. And then we create a separate corner for children and soothe our conscience: “At least there’s a playground…” But the issue is not only the playground. It’s the sidewalk a child walks along during the day, the corner they turn, the bus stop they wait at, the space in front of the school, the route to the grocery store… That’s where the real stage of life is.

As I write this, one image keeps returning to my mind: we are waiting at a crosswalk. I check the road almost automatically, acting as if to say, “Okay, go.” My son, before anything else, looks for eye contact. He looks at the driver, trying to understand whether the driver has noticed him. For a child, safety is sometimes not in the sign on the pole, but in being seen. In that quiet message of “I noticed you.” It’s that simple, that human.

So are we going to talk about this 95 cm issue as if it were only a slogan? I don’t really have the heart for that. Because out in the field, you see something very clearly: sometimes it’s not the big projects, but the small adjustments that save lives. The gap in a drainage grate, the height of a curb, the sightline at a corner, the position of a sign… These get dismissed as “details,” but in a child’s walk they can become a massive obstacle.

When a designer looks “from below” at what they say, “I drew this”… some things start to feel unnecessarily harsh. Some forms look unnecessarily large. Some solutions, while trying to be “safe,” have turned into something intimidating. The adult mind sometimes loves big gestures: wide openings, hard edges, tall elements… A child, however, wants not a grand spectacle, but consistent small continuities. A sidewalk that keeps the same width, a corner that doesn’t surprise you, lighting that repeats in a predictable rhythm, a surface that isn’t slippery… And that repetition is not boredom, as we often assume. In a child’s language, it means “being able to predict.” And being able to predict means safety.

At this point, an objection usually appears: “If we design everything for children, won’t it feel too tight for adults?” I understand that, because the city is already a place where interests collide. But there is a simple reality: most of the things you improve for a child also benefit the adult. Calmer traffic, crossings that are easier to read, more shade, seating that is easier to reach, less noise… None of these diminish anyone. On the contrary, they make the city a little more livable. When you make room for the most fragile, everyone gets to breathe. It almost feels like a general rule of life.

When you talk with a child, you start to understand what we call “participation” in a different way. Showing a plan to a child and asking, “Do you like it?” is little more than a pointless effort, or a kind of performative gesture. But when you ask, “Where do you run on the way to school?”, “What scares you in the city?”, “When you stand next to this bench, what do you feel like doing?”, suddenly you get very clear answers. A child doesn’t describe space as a “drawing,” but as a “stage.” On that stage, where do they speed up, where do they hesitate, where does it turn into play… That is the real information.

All of this, for me, keeps circling back to a phrase I love in landscape architecture: “reading the site.” In this piece, I’m suggesting we do that reading a little lower, a little slower, and a little more from the heart. When you look from 95 cm, the city suddenly stops being only a child’s issue; it becomes an issue for all of us. Because a city truly grows when it makes room for its smallest user. And by growth, I don’t mean skyscrapers; I mean becoming finer, softer, more attentive… In a way, a city’s maturity shows itself here.

In landscape architecture, the success of a project depends not only on a good design, but also on correct implementation and on being sustained over the long term through regular maintenance. Yet today, in many cities, serious breaks are visible between the links of this chain. The outcome is parks that deteriorate quickly, public spaces that lose their function, ecological mismatches, and a waste of resources.

As cities expand, the spaces where we can breathe become narrower; every doorway opening to nature becomes more valuable. For this reason, landscape architecture has become not merely an aesthetic touch, but a fundamental component that keeps urban life standing.

The fate of a landscape project is shaped from the very first line drawn. Yet, quite often:

• Decisions that are not grounded in scientific evidence,
• Repeated “typical” projects,
• Participation processes being skipped,
• Ecological impacts being pushed into the background

lead the design to be weak from the start. When the planning phase is surrendered to short-term political targets, the long-term sustainability of the project can disappear almost instantly.

Many projects that look flawless on paper become unrecognizable once they reach the construction site. The main reasons include:

• Off-plan changes made on site under the justification of “cost reduction,”
• The use of poor-quality, substandard materials,
• Specialized work being assigned to inexperienced crews,
• Incorrect plant selection, faulty planting techniques, and repetitive, copy-paste planting palettes.

Result: critical details that carry the essence of the design lose their character, and the project looks aged and “used” from day one.

Landscape does not end with implementation; in fact, the real story begins there. Yet in many projects, maintenance is assumed to be nothing more than “mowing and irrigation.” Maintenance teams often work without a system; there is no professional landscape architect oversight, and ecological rhythms are not taken into account.

When budget constraints enter the picture, things become even more complicated. Plants fall under stress, the space wears out quickly, and public perception settles on this point: “That park was poorly designed anyway.”

Yet the problem is not the design; it is that maintenance is not valued as much as design.

This invisible crisis affects urban life in many ways:

• Public spaces that go unused and lose their identity
• Declining biodiversity
• Increasing urban heat island effect
• Rising public cost due to “parks renewed every year”

When even a single link in the chain breaks, the value that landscape architecture adds to the city visibly decreases.

The solution lies in reconnecting these three phases:

• Planning: a data-driven, climate-adaptive, participatory approach
• Implementation: fidelity to the project, quality standards, expert teams
• Maintenance: a sustainable maintenance plan aligned with seasonal cycles and ecology

When this perspective is adopted, landscape architecture can be repositioned not as merely a “visible” job, but as a core component of urban life.

No matter how strong the intention at the planning stage may be, once the project reaches the implementation site, things often evolve in a different direction. Projects are reshaped under cost pressures, material quality is reduced, and critical details that carry the spirit of the design are lost in execution. One of the biggest problems is working with teams that are not specialists in the job. Low-quality plant material, incorrect planting methods, or unplanned groundworks can turn even the most careful design into an ordinary space. As a result, projects on site become fragmented and inadequate, far from the integrity they had in drawings.

This disconnect brings cities serious costs both economically and socially. Details lost between planning and implementation, combined with insufficient maintenance, shorten the lifespan of public spaces and produce expensive projects that require constant renewal. The bond users form with the place weakens, living environments become dysfunctional, and urban identity gradually fades. In the end, landscape architecture is perceived not at the center of urban life as it should be, but as a secondary “decoration” activity.

Yet the solution lies in a holistic perspective that reconnects every link in the chain. A planning approach nourished by scientific data, sensitive to climate, and participatory; an implementation process that is faithful to the project, high-quality, and transparent; and a management approach that is led by experts, sustainable, and prioritizes ecological maintenance can be the key to overcoming this invisible crisis. When landscape architecture gains this kind of wholeness, cities do not merely become more attractive; they gain a character that breathes, lives, and grows stronger over time.

The shadow of the black pine carrying the night sits on my tent by the shore of Karagöl like a roof tile; as if to protect the sky from the fragile weight of the stars.. As the wind passes through the needle leaves, it trembles like a thin reed string, leaving rings on the lake surface that narrow and widen… With the first light of morning, the mist behaves like an architect: it fades the lines, softens the volumes, redefines the sense of scale. I line up the pages of this morning in my mind, but before I start writing, I lean my head against the trunk of the black pine. Silence is the first stage of creativity; the tree knows it well.

Space is often remembered not with the eye, but with the skin.

Juhani Pallasmaa

As I tie the rope of my tent to the soil, I can’t help thinking of the planning lines of cities in the tension of the rope. A good tie is not only a knot, it is the touch of the rhythms of two beings to each other. Human settlements are like this too: they live when they establish ties that heed the valley of the stream, the weight of the slope, the direction of the wind. McHarg’s call of “Design with Nature” does not fall idle here, in the shadow of the black pine; the path that goes where the water goes, the row of houses that does not cut the wind, the clusters of trees that multiply shade in the village square all follow the trace of the same morality: design is, first, listening.

As I walk slowly along the lakeside, the small sounds of the countryside form a harmony that rests the soul: the mechanical rhythm a woodpecker creates on the black pine with its beak, the wavy melody of a distant cowbell, the sound made by carp jumping with joyful excitement in the lake, a bird chirping with the cheer of morning, the crackle of the fire lit by a camper waking from sleep. These sounds do not tell the complexity of a city, but the steadiness of a landscape. Rural landscape is the place where the human hand knows its measure, where it invents the engineering of “just enough”. Here the idea of “big” is not an enchantment that hurts the soil; it is a rhythm suited to the patience of the soil. A farmer’s steps slowly rising on the slope are perhaps the most honest indicator of the word “sustainability”: adjusting your step to the language of the ground.

The sensitive sensors we establish with technology in the city are present here in the vibration of a needle leaf. Still, it crosses my mind: the energy, water, and security management promised by smart parks is meaningful when it can approach the economy of nature; the engineering of a tree that does not fit into a human lifetime shows us the real “data architecture”. Maybe what we seek in urban parks is, as much as wireless networks; the instinct of birds, butterflies to weave a network; as much as an LED line, the photon pact that dew drops establish with the morning light. The “smartness” of urban systems matures as it gets closer to rural wisdom.

A fish jumps on the lake; the rings multiply toward the shore like an acoustic diagram. At that very moment, I think of the ring-by-ring effects of design decisions: a small terrace wall resisting erosion, a currant at the field boundary, a riverside willow that shoulders the water during a flood. Each object added to the landscape without intervening in the natural structure is practical sentences of the alliance engineering builds with poetry. Aldo Leopold’s land ethic turns here from a theoretical text into a reality: the silent agreement of soil, water, birds, and people. The tip of a black pine root probes the soil as if it were the signing ink of this agreement; fungal networks work underground like a low-noise internet: they silently direct information, water, and glucose. Sustainability sometimes requires not only “high technology”, but “deep ecology”; sometimes it is not a sensor, but a root.

I open the zipper of the tent and sit facing the lake. In front of me, it is not the “emptiness” of water, but the spine of the landscape standing as a solid being. Water is the first line that establishes the city; the road often imitates the axis of water. On the lake shore, I see children skipping stones—childhood learns to make a plan on the surface of water; grasping the trace of the stone is the moment we first come close to drawing a line. Even these few meters of soil at the edge of the lake whisper the pedagogy of a well-constructed play street: micro-slopes that surprise, a shrub mass that allows hiding, a route that is not standard and imposed… The thing called play is actually a spatial curriculum. The hopscotch squares we draw in a schoolyard are, in fact, a trace of a city; in the countryside, the child writes their trace on the grass, in the city, on asphalt. For a child, play has no place and no time. I have been saying for years that play streets in our country need to be reconsidered: we need shade, material and spatial difference, a detail that breaks tempo, a void that allows free play. But not as it is now, of course. For this reason, I am also writing my doctoral thesis specifically on play streets.

Through the branches of the black pine I see the sky sliced into segments; this natural partition has no quarrel with geometry, because geometry is the interpretation of people at the macro scale. At the micro scale, everything in nature is geometry. When humankind applies geometry at the macro scale in urban architecture, everything feels artificial, everything feels far from naturalness.. In rural landscape, the method of collecting knowledge is not with a notebook, it is with the body; the body learns when it is close to the soil.

In this clearing where the black pines across rise shoulder to shoulder like a wall, as old wooden swings sway with the wind, children measure the rhythm of time with the tips of their feet; each forward motion is a sentence of childhood opened to the horizon, each return is like a comma placed in a safe nest. The bare honesty of rural landscape is on stage: the uneven texture of the grass, the fragile light of the sun, and the shadow forest piled on the horizon. This scene whispers how the simplest state of play—freedom and curiosity—turns a space into a field of education. The texture of the wood, the metallic tone the chain makes, and the flexibility of the soil; all together they teach children an environmental alphabet. And as a landscape architect, I remain alone with the big lesson of this small moment: a good play space is not only a ground that softens falling; it is also a sky that raises imagination and a shade that makes returning safe.

Just before I drift into a noon nap in the shadow of the black pine, I remember the water mill at the edge of the village: a technology that “borrows” the force of water. The first lesson of sustainable design should be not “stealing” from nature, but “borrowing” from it. This borrowing must be returnable: an economy that pays its debt to soil, water, air. While defending the reading of waste management with smart sensors in the city, if we do not see the non-wasteful logistics of an ant nest in the countryside, we lose our balance. The forest is the anonymous inventor of the zero-waste idea; every decay is the material of a new beginning. This is what I grasped, down to technique, when designing a wooden bench: the act of sitting is only the waiting moment of a carrying system; every recycled fiber kneads the dough of this waiting.

While defending the reading of waste management with smart sensors in the city, if we do not see the non-wasteful logistics of an ant nest in the countryside, we lose our balance. The forest is the anonymous inventor of the zero-waste idea; every decay is the material of a new beginning.

I often say that choosing trees to sit under their shade is a delicate professional job in terms of city climate. Shade is not only coolness, it is a protocol of life: the filtration of leaf texture, the pattern rhythm of branch shade, the negotiation of crown form with the wind, the intelligence of the root system that does not break the pavement… In our cities, we should choose trees not to be popular, but to join life. Shade is, more than an aesthetic gesture, an act of justice: to rest what the sun has tired, to lighten the burden of the heat island, to give breath to fragile bodies.

In the afternoon, while walking around the lake, suddenly a shoreline project repaired by human intervention comes to my mind: turning an area where trash was collected into an ecological park with a line stretching along the shore like a red ribbon… Proof of moments when design improves the world with a light move. The naturalness of Karagöl makes me think about that line again: every repair begins first with listening; not a red ribbon perhaps, but you pull a dark green silence to the shore of the water. Transforming a city sometimes passes not through a huge excavation (construction), but through an ethics of line: lines that do not break the existing syntax of the ecosystem, but rather make it visible.

We chat briefly with an old shepherd I meet on the lakeshore. He asks: “How old do you think that tree is?” I say I do not know the answer exactly, but I have a good intuition about the patience of pines. He smiles: “Then let’s say at least our three lives.” Rural wisdom fits into one sentence many things we search for in the pages of academia. Maybe this is what Heidegger calls “dwelling”: sheltering within the world, getting along well with things, not breaking the scale. In the mortar of a stone wall, there is the salt of neighborhood; in the weave of a fence, the courtesy of setting a boundary. The teaching of rural landscape is the engineering of relationships.

As the day turns to evening, the color of the lake darkens. The shadow of the black pine stretches along the shore like a long “footnote”—as if to correct everything I have written. I think: Architecture is sometimes a thesis; landscape is the footnotes dropped onto that thesis. The thesis speaks loudly; the footnote whispers to the ear. Being a designer in the countryside is learning to whisper. Small intuitions rather than big gestures; fine workmanship rather than thick emphasis. Raising a waterway by two fingers, lowering the slope of a path by one degree, lowering the sitting level of a bench by a span… All these small moves, together, work like a physiotherapy that heals the body of the city.

I brew my tea at the camp stove. The steam of the tea disperses among the needle leaves. As I take a sip, I can’t help thinking about the circular economy in the city, carbon, water. Nature takes all its energy from the stars; the biggest battery is the sky. The systems we establish should be only reflections of this great battery. We should borrow from the sun, the wind, the rain, and return the rest to nature.

Children’s laughter comes from behind the trees—maybe they are competing to find more frogs by the lakeshore, maybe they are playing hide-and-seek among the tents, or maybe they are playing a balance-walk game on cut tree stumps… There is no better public space test than children’s play. If a space calls children to play spontaneously, a correct balance has been established there. The Children’s Playgrounds found in the city owe to the existence of a child running barefoot on the shore of Karagöl: to the rhythm of shade, the texture of the surface, surprising turns. As designers, we only draw the measure lines in a musical notation; children compose the melody. This perspective points to the possibility that freedom, safety, and curiosity can be possible at the same time under the shadow of traditional games.

As evening falls, the sky between the branches of the black pine divides into mosaics; the stars embed like stones into a dark navy mortar. In that moment, it becomes easier to think about how we will light a park, which plants we will choose along the edge of a road, how we will calm the wind of a square. Because design questions often seem difficult because they are asked in the wrong place; the right place is where the answer has been waiting for years. At Karagöl I am standing by the shore of the right place: water, shade, and silence. Inside me a notebook opens; on every line it says: “Slow down. Listen. Adapt.”

In the deepest part of the night, I touch the trunk of the black pine. At my fingertips a coolness, as if a brief summary of the patience the tree has stored for years. In the city we often get carried away by the attraction of “big projects”; yet nature says that greatness is an aesthetic of zero showiness, high patience. Maybe the reason projects like Red Ribbon Park attract us is this: the promise of a big ethical transformation with a very small intervention. Karagöl whispers the opposite: what a very big being—the forest and water—asks of us is a reduced intervention; to pull back, to listen, to adapt.

Design questions often seem difficult because they are asked in the wrong place; the right place is where the answer has been waiting for years.

Toward dawn, as the shadow of the black pine shifts place again, I start packing up the tent together with my family. My belongings look quite light compared to a concrete structure, yet up to a point the function of both is the same.. I think that design could be this light as well: a drawing where lines exist only as much as necessary, materials stand only where they need to, no unnecessary barriers exist on the path of water. The concept called “smart growth” might be, perhaps, its smartest form, an imagination of a city that manages not to grow, but to reduce the load. The countryside has no utopia; it has everydayness. When our utopias, too, one day become as convincing as the countryside’s everydayness, our cities will learn to leave a trace.

As I set off, I look at the lake one last time. The lake is clear, as if it has read all the notes of the night and translated them into its own language. The black pine raises its hand behind me and gives a silent greeting. In my mind, I repeat perhaps the only truly correct manifesto of landscape architecture: “Learn the language of nature; whisper to design with it.” If every line I draw for the city carries sounds from this dignified alphabet of the countryside, one day when a child in the city runs to the shade, that shade will be not only coolness, but a kindness. When an old person stands up from a bench, not their back pain but the rhythm of their walk will be remembered. When a cyclist crosses a bridge, the load the wind leaves on their shoulders will lessen. And the shadow of the black pine will remain as a broken line in the water of Karagöl: a line that waits for patience to be read, and for the slowness of the body to be understood.

I put this line in my pocket and set off. The city is a notebook opening in front of me; I have a pen warmed in the bosom of the countryside. The ink of the sentences I will write is, today, a coolness filtered from the shadow of a black pine. A coolness that will be understood not when the writing ends, but when the words fall silent. And this coolness will, perhaps one day, fall onto the face of a child at the edge of a park—with free play, with a safe night, with a fair shade.

The ticket is punched, the door closes, the cabin gives a slight shudder. The gears begin to clatter like an old music box, slowly turning the city’s secrets toward us. As the Ferris wheel rises, the city finds the courage to look at itself from the outside. What appears from above is not a plan; it is a polyphonic song, too many-voiced to be expressed with a single line. Somewhere the wind, somewhere else a bus horn; on one corner the laughter of the city crowd, on the other side footsteps on the pavement, like a broken clock… Height does not only increase distance, it also enlarges conscience: every point below is someone’s everyday fate.

When you watch the city from above, the language of space can be read more clearly. Lengthening roads are verbs, squares are adverbs, trees are the adjectives in the sentence. Benches are periods, stairs are colons; they say, “From here on, something else will begin.” A child’s voice is an exclamation mark; the silence on an elderly shoulder is an ellipsis… Landscape architecture, in this language, is not spelling rules but the melody of flow. The designer is sometimes the songwriter of the song, sometimes merely a well-tuned instrument performer. A city’s good design is understood not from the heights, but from the levels where sounds can collide without hurting one another.

The Ferris wheel quietly reminds us of the argument between centripetal force and the centrifugal. Is the city pulling us to the center, or flinging us to the edges? Like a river flowing in the same direction as the morning traffic, we are dragged toward the center; in the evening, on the way home, each of us tries to find a small shore. The child who takes refuge in the play area, the old person curling into the shade of the bench, the worker cutting through the narrow path between two vacant lots… Each seeks their own miniature door. Good landscape legitimizes these shores. The shade of plane trees continuing along the street axis, surprise sculptures placed at street corners, a heart and two letters carved into a tree trunk… They all tell the same thing: “You can stay.”

The city’s most genuine clock works with shadows. Clock towers show the hour; shadows show time. The minute hand of noon and the hour hand of morning are not the same. Because the backrest of a bench is tilted five degrees more, it holds the sun on your face ten minutes longer; those ten minutes are the time in which a mother can comfortably decide to breastfeed, an elderly person can straighten their back, a child can finish the game and say goodbye to a friend. Design is the name of a rehearsal of humanity played out in millimeters. Small gestures not seen in the drawing are the great reliefs of everyday life.

From above, even the route of the wind becomes visible. One street has accelerated between tall blocks; another glides gently between two poplar trees. The designer who reads the wind also arranges the sound (see: the Noise Screen Function with Playa Honda City Park). Screen-leaved trees place their fingers on the wheel of the wind; water mirrors do not break the noise, but teach you to speak with it. There is justice in acoustics: peace should be shared not only with villas but also with those waiting at the bus stop. Fairness comes to the city when decibels are distributed justly as well. The engine noise that hits the wall of a schoolyard settles as an unease etched into memory from age three to thirteen. Pocket parks built between buildings to escape the city’s noise (see: Greenacre Park) are not a luxury but a public right.

With every turn of the Ferris wheel, another story leaks in through the glass. The simit seller at the corner rotates the stand according to the wind; as rain approaches, he lowers the edge of the awning by a few centimeters. In the side street, a courier loses not time but patience at a ramp that does not exist on the sidewalk. In the park across, because shadow projections were miscalculated, the slide becomes orphaned in the afternoon. At an apartment entrance, the tactile guiding surface has turned into decoration with a wrong restoration; for someone who cannot see, the guiding line has been sacrificed to the line of ornamental marble. Sometimes the city, with a desire for grandeur, loses its manners; it stumbles in the ethics of details. Right here, landscape architecture can be an invisible vigil of justice.

The city also speaks with its smell. Into the warm smell of bread spilling out from the bakery, the heavy odor of traffic smoke mixes; a street corner becomes identified with the scent of the oleaster tree from your childhood. The right plant blossoms at the right time and works like a navigation device: “If this scent has arrived, home is near.” Smell is the city’s most democratic sign; it shows the way even to someone who does not know how to read a signboard. Constantly sprayed chemical “cleanliness” smells erase the memory of place. It is possible to keep things clean with respect, without turning the city into a sterile hotel; smell is the right to remember.

For a landscape architect, the city is a place where not only forms but also pauses are designed. A bench where stopping is not shamed, a shade where waiting is not considered a crime… To see “waiting” only as a patience test at traffic lights is an injustice to the city. Waiting is a chance to fold inward and breathe. That is why the orientation of benches does not look only at the view; when placed correctly, it also opens a door for a person to look inward. In an arrangement where two benches face each other and, at the midpoint, a tree trunk softens the dialogue, greeting becomes possible without being acquainted. Public life matures as small possibilities multiply.

The Ferris wheel metaphor does not reduce the city to entertainment; but it reminds us of the seriousness of play. Play is the stage where rules and freedom are equalized. The tremble of a child as they toss their first stone onto a hopscotch line is kin to the breath a young person adjusts as they reach for a microphone for the first time to sing in a square. Both are the name of courage waiting at the threshold of the public. The city should be a greenhouse that carefully grows courage. An engine that lowers its decibel, a driver who swallows the delay, a tree that shares its shade, a sidewalk that shares its line… The sum of small kindnesses becomes a great fortune of courage.

Materials have a morality. The rust of a screw reveals neglect; the rudeness of a level difference reveals haste; the smirk of patch asphalt poured as “urgent intervention” reveals sustainable unsustainability. The generosity of design is read in the tenderness of the material. The roughness of a surface that touches a child’s palm, the soft curve of a curb that meets an elderly person’s cane, a red brick used purely for aesthetics instead of using briquettes on a wall… When all of these come together, the sentence “I’m glad I’m here” comes out of the mouth. This sentence is the most reliable satisfaction index for a well-mannered city.

Time is a topography in the city. Between morning and evening we rise and fall. At noon, avenues are held on the axis of the sun; toward evening, streets lengthen, shadows take a nap on the ground. Design is the art of making this topography walkable. A pergola that reads the sundial, a fence that tames the wind, a channel that carries water without spilling while letting you walk over it… What we call “detail” in architecture is, in fact, the disciplining of time.

At the top of the Ferris wheel there is a brief pause. Below, as a child lets out the string of a kite, the wind, with a shy courtesy, tests the line. A cargo worker presses the doorbell with the trained motion of their wrist, steps back and leaves space. A bicycle path curling like a ribbon patiently accompanies the rough flow of an avenue. A cat arranges its life according to the animal lovers of the neighborhood. These small scenes become more convincing than the city’s big claims. Because life takes its inspiration not from giant statues, but from small courtesies.

Beauty in the city often comes not with speed, but with nests placed between speeds. A soft strip of grass laid not right on the running track but on its edge; a narrow balcony set on the mid-landing of a stair; a step-seating unit by the stream that says “wait and listen” instead of rushing past… The city reminds us of being human with these small calls to “stop.” Some count this as inefficiency; yet a person lives not for efficiency, but for meaning.

One day I wish to see a giant inscription in the middle of the city: “Curiosity Allowed.” Because where there is no curiosity, a street is merely a geometric necessity between two points. When curiosity is allowed, the street becomes an ethical possibility between two people. Children climb onto a corner stone and wave to a world taller than themselves; young people tune a guitar at the base of a wall; the elderly know the subtlety of placing shadows side by side. If curiosity is free, the city learns; if the city learns, we change too.

As the cabin slowly descends, we lock eyes with the city’s eyes. Below, nothing looks as if it has changed, but I may have changed. Perhaps the Ferris wheel exists for this: to see the same view, one turn later, as a different person. Design is a bit like this; it transforms not the material, but the one who looks. Today, that narrow shade at the entrance of a park that I passed by without noticing, tomorrow I will seek consciously. If today I do not hear the wheel catching on a threshold, tomorrow I will hear that sound like the city’s highest alarm.

When the door opens to get out, the lines on the ground are again the lines we know; but our words have multiplied. The city is no longer only a job in my plan notebook; it is a sentence fogged onto the cabin’s glass. Like a child drawing a heart with their finger, I write an invisible message into the air with my finger: “Let’s turn again.” Perhaps in another season, with another light, in the sound of another wind… Sometimes one more turn is needed to give the city its due. And each turn whispers the same question: “Today, with which small detail will you make the world a little more livable?” Speaking of a notebook, I would like to bid farewell with my poem that I recorded in my agenda dated April 5, 2013:

We all grew up in the same geography, We are the same children of different bodies.. Axes are the same, traces are the same, sounds are the same, words are the same.. The view is the same, the shutter is the same, the photograph is the same.. Is there no one who can think differently? For years we have been using the same architecture, On the street the lamps are the same, In the kitchen the cupboards.. We decorated our dreams with the same colors, We saw the same people every day, We walked home from the same street.. We got so used to seeing the same things, We became enemies of differences. The same thoughts took place, The same words were spoken. Now, We need to say something new..