by Orhan Ayyüce
Say, many times a question asked; how did you become an architect?
Memories of childhood hold many clues to one's present condition and intellectual content.
For few years, I grew up on an old rug with geometric patterns, not unlike a sub-divisional map with individual plots of land. Kind of Cartesian grid, rocked and unrolled...
Those patterns -perhaps developed on a Central Asian steppe, by the people, who, near Tashkent, not necessarily having an address in the city.
Me, a budding designer, with tin-car toys and day after day organization trainee, in the living room, on the family rug, providing sound effects for this otherwise silent city... Sort of, self defining and infrastructuring a sprawl, an inner city block, a utopian community in my childish imagination and 'cheekiness.'
Plots of land;
Randomly containing, a house or a low-rise apartment, even a bad ass doll house, resolving 'detailed details' for each, landscaped, gardened and sitting pretty on top of the wool piles...
I am five years old;
At the heights of my learning curve.
Just before the elementary schooling, shortly after I can recall my personal memories and spatial recordings, as a child.
As the super junior, no, make that a master of the living room rug.
My grandmother's wedding present to my parents.
Yes, I was born to the Wooled City. With worn out sections and smell of naphthalene, before it was declared dangerous to my health.
Sometimes;
I drove the police car with toy siren and bringing my dirt truck via the other edge pattern into the scene, if I am not just parking one my taxicabs, near the designated train station, not far from the homes of real characters in my life at that point. I would sometimes put, as his political downfall, our mean neighbor in the basement beneath the family dog Mike's two story house. My dog Mike, a brown Pointer with private jets and the best house on the block, the only being, deserving all the best...
The address;
The original departure point of my architectural foray, the foundation of young architect's urban design visuals and purest configurations of better cities.
I was in the same city day after day, until the third grade.
A familiar landscape, endlessly remodeled with cars changing hands and roads changing directions.
The monotony of pattern-less wall-to-wall carpet, not...
Scale of the 8' by 11' rug changing back and forth, in the child's imagination. There were roads, buildings and bridges no more than few inches in real time.
My first physical model of entire city, called Rugtown in Livingroomia, in the continent of First Floor unit: C...
Street address typical.
You need the details of small places when you work the metropolis...
Many years later;
The said town is still there. The rug exists. Buildings long gone, infrastructure worn out, inhabitants moved away or dead.
It is tempting to walk down to toyshop and get some plastic transportation. However, the size of my body would be out of scale, which would make it hard to maneuver some of the urban transformation ideas.
A child's imagination is large.
But, it gets cynical in time for some people, rendering itself minus constructive plus doubtful.
Perhaps, blown out of scale, providing less, taking more...
If any, and not for the conversation's sake, I have to remind myself to get kynical...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
A long-time contributor to Archinect as a senior editor and writing about architecture, urbanism, people, politics, arts, and culture. The featured articles, interviews, news posts, activism, and provocations are published here and on other websites and media. A licensed architect in ...
8 Comments
A quote from the website of the wonderful local rug importer with whom I work as frequently as possible:
Why do we have this craving for beauty?
It would have been simpler - and the rugs just as useful -
to leave the wool
To weave solid colors, or simple stripes.
But since the beginning, handmade carpets
have been adorned with clouds and
hunting scenes, ladders, medallions, niches for prayer.
Why bother? What makes us human?
I must go out and find my 5yo a cool second-(or third, 4th...)hand rug with a pattern now. The current one is a 4" grid of red lines on buff. Not interesting enough by far.
Beautiful story, Orhan. I love comparing how we architects started our obsession/passion.
thanks lb!
rugs can also be subversive!
Orhan
I am sure this story takes everyone back to their own fantastic childhood like it took me back in time right away. It was like a magical time journey which made me also remember the patterns on the cheap tile mosaics in my grandparents bathroom. The three dimensional worlds were created and adored out of 2 dimensional surfaces. It was as if we created our own miniatures which we have learned at school later on. The state of being a child which we still hold in ourselves today. I almost wish that the children would take control of the world sometimes.
Very intense and poetic Orhan.
Beautiful piece. Touching a lot with few words. Thank you O.
bora and op-ed, thanks for reading.
bora, i know those tiles you are talking about. we had them too. they were like 3d chess board.
Iranian artist Babak Golkar
Hey Quondam, they need to be made into a real rug. Don't wait until someone rip you off...
Quondam you have the CADS it could not be hard to make these rugs.
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