Merve Gül Özokcu
Studio grant holder in Stockholm 1 – 31 October 2021
Merve Gül Özokcu is an architect, academic and activist based in Istanbul. Her research focuses on commons, creative actions, narratives of everyday life and indigenous eco-feminist practices. Currently, she’s the vice president of the board Herkes için Mimarlık (Architecture for All) Association that aims to resolve social problems through architecture, while searching for alternative ways of practicing architecture.
Chicago Merve in action, Photo: Merve Gül Özokcu
In her research she’s trying to recreate the environment where narratives are told between the women of a family while preparing the meal. She’s interested in a methodological tool that archives the collective memory of space as a way of revealing the unrepresented ones who are under the prism of labor-experience hierarchy. Merve Gül Özokcu is a PhD candidate in Istanbul Technical University Architectural Design program. She is a grant holder of İstanbul Cultural Art Foundation’s Design Resilience Program and she’s a part of Arazi Assembly (2016, Mardin); a research assembly consisting of researchers that are working together in different spatial scales focusing on the Southeast region of Turkey. Arazi considers collective research as a form of knowledge production of decolonization, care and solidarity. She was represented in the 2nd Chicago Architecture Biennale 2019, with “Secret Ingredient”, with Herkes için Mimarlık Derneği.