Starting in the Middle: A Method Trial

In the MIM121 Architectural Design I "Starting in the Middle" studio group, which we conducted in the 2023-2024 fall semester at Gebze Technical University, we aimed to question how architecture establishes and transforms the relations between human and non-human worlds under the theme "Umwelt: Building a World". For this, we have adopted Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatic idea of "being in the middle/starting in the middle" as the studio's processing method and Baruch Spinoza's idea of "being the source of virtuous effects" as our way of acting. We have determined the German biologist Jakob Johann von Uexküll's concept of Umwelt as the theme, considering that the effort to understand the worlds of other living beings we share our environment with has not only a biological or architectural but also an ethical/political side. Uexküll's concept of environment-world (Umwelt), which examines the behavior of animals in the environments they live in, positions itself against the objective, homogeneous and human-centered view of space by arguing that each living thing has its own spatio-temporal understanding and meaning-making process. This concept lays the groundwork for evaluating space as a subjective, multi-agent, heterogeneous sum of pluralities. Within the scope of this article, we document and analyze the syllabus of the MIM121 Architectural Design I studio group from the specific perspective and method of the studio. In doing so, we rely on the results of the 2015 "Architecture Schools First Year Studio Meeting II" workshop. Ten years after this workshop, which revealed the problems and goals of first-year architecture studios on a national scale, we are analyzing our own studio in the context of the workshop's outputs, and we are considering making a contribution to these outputs. Thus, we hope that by discussing the limits, opportunities and threats of the proposed methodology, it will provide a basis for similar studios.