BURCA TEKİN - 11535024 -

HN: Exactly. Only one thing I would like to comment on
are the stars and the badges. The reason why I called
them stupid pieces of paper is because there is no culture
as you said that make them meaningful. Relying on
your metaphor of passport actually reverses it and make
it an actual passport. You would see people showing
each other the visas in Turkey that they have certificate
to go in to for example Venezuela. So why are people
doing that? Or why are people taking selfies in front of
Eiffel Tower? Because, it means them to be there and it is
important to prove that they had access to Eiffel Tower.
In the case of my certificates, it is the lack of culture that
make the administrators produce those stupid things.
And to my second point. In a way speaking of creating a
culture, you basically fight with the anthropologists. They
are crossed at you because they do not like the idea of
how is a culture comes about? You do not go and start
creating a culture, you live it. You make it existing. Again
turning back to my own institution, you are right we are
very lucky to have resources, but I am also trying to save
students from their instructors. I am trying to open up all
the resources to individual students who would like to use
them under guidance of course. I am giving money to students
who has projects in the faculty budget. Despite some
objections, the concept of whatever thinking in philosophy,
it is called learning in a system of education. Sometimes
education overcomes and obstructs learning. Obstructs its
own raison d’être that we are here to educate people, to
make them learn things and we obstruct them because of
our structure. What do we do? We encourage thinking in
philosophy. Formal philosophy education is good but you
do not need a formal philosophy education to be a philosopher.
You can teach with that diploma but you cannot
be a philosopher. Similarly, you can learn right next to the
formal education. I do not have a name for it. Because
formal education has government and companies behind
of this tradition for hundreds of years but sometimes it kills
its own objective. So that is how I understand it. We mean
the same thing. Just existing side by side with education,
professional organisations. One thing I would like to
re-emphasise in my previous talk is to identify areas of
learning which might not exist in the formal systems. There
are things that we could learn from other disciplines such
as nature, children plays and so on. There are zillions of
areas where formal system of education close their doors
and they do not allow it.
SS: One single word to say about that is to ask from
childhood, what did you learn last night?
Ebru Alarslan (EA): I think in regard to yesterday,
I understood your point more on what makes a
designer. Formal education is what you refer as
competences, credentials are also a bit life experience,
actions place your initiatives to upgrade
yourself. I think this is what you tried to mean and
measure by our perception. Actually, these are the
three main fields which is complementary to make
a designer. I agree with all these points. But what
type of formal education is taken as viewpoint?
Formal education from my point of view, is just
saving time because in your formal education you learn
about other life experiences happened in the past but you
can also learn things by your own experience. So this is just
about saving time. Even when I think about my bachelor
degree, now I am very thankful. But as he has mentioned
in the previous session, if the formal education is structured
by the professors who are able to give lectures, it might not
give a good result. So what I would like to say that in competences,
credentials or actions, we might think about what
makes competences competent, what makes credentials
remarkable, what type of actions are effective also by what
standards and points? What features describe competences?
Because it might also be changed by periods, countries
and regions.
Harun Ekinoğlu (HE): I think in this respect, I
would like to share an experience of mine from citys
urban office where I used to work more or less six
to seven years. In 2001, we presented a proceeding
in the academic meeting of landscape architects in
Ankara. Our paper had a point stating that we need
credentials for competences. But there is no current
and a reliable system that is doing that which I believe
is very urgent. Because when we are designing
and preparing projects for the city, we go to official,
legal and bureaucratic stories. If it is a street furniture,
who is going to make it? Can we categorise it?
Or are we just going to say alright, we expect firms
hiring people with a degree of product design? I
believe it is not enough. But how can you trust and
measure such expectation? It is a big risk because we
are spending public money and we are responsible
about it. When you spend public money, you are
responsible to the end. The system asks you how did
you measure this person whether if he is competent
enough to work in this firm? Which credentials did
you consider to go with that firm?
DG: And where is the system that measures the
competence of a city planner to make decisions?
HE: The system that we rely on is the current system
of institutional organisations that are supposedly
does not exist. For example, we are going to do a
design project in an archeologic site. For that we expect
landscape architects and architects that already
did some projects to contribute in such site. But we
do not have such a system to measure it. I know that
my friend did such things before but this is a friend
relationship and there are also others. So this is a big
ambiguity for us to propose a new, reliable system.
I think the people who are supposed to do are the
professional organisations. Who else, because we are
getting degrees from universities and they do not
care what we do in our professional life.
HN: So how did you measure their previous work? Because
that their work is out there. If they screwed a job before, you
simply fire them.
HE: But how could we? It is still not objective. It is about how
they present it to you.
DG: You asked a question but the answer is not black and
white. When you are building a bridge, an engineer has to
have a license and hopefully the engineer who passes can
build a bridge. It is not always true. Architects I know in Turkey
have to be part of a professional organisation in order to sign
a document. But looking around, some buildings are not so
much of a presence to the people. Doctors also have to pass
through a license and hopefully most of the doctors are ok.
But sometimes they are not. So, when it comes to design, it is
much less structured than medicine, engineering or law. But
you are expecting a professional organisation to say that this
designer or colleague is good and this designer or colleague
is not good.
HE: It is not that much of good or not good analogy. He did
this, in this year, in this budget, in this area. So everything
becomes very objective.
DG: Life is not objective, it is rather difficult. The answer to
your question is if, because the public money is concerned
which is a problem, since you need some support to make a
decision, I think it comes to a big project that in making the
decision, and choosing between some options. If you include
according to the criteria to a committee that is making decisions,
with several representatives of a professional organisation,
they probably have the experience to see who the candidates
are and suggest that this one might be a better chance
than this one.
HE: I wish we could have such a committee or a routine processes.
But actually we have such committees in competitions.
For example, there was an amazing committee for the competition
we did in Yenikapı area. It was with architects that are in
well reputation. They did a critical and in-depth evaluation but
in the routine, there is no such committee.
DG: Life is difficult.
SS: Coming back to what we were talking, what do you mean
by there must be an evaluation added to these three. We have
credentials, competences and actions but we do not have
evaluation. Should we add this one?
DG: I think it is a good question. For example, there are
designers in Ontario the providence of Canada. The graphic
designers miraculously succeeded in moving through the parliament.
A resolution which registered graphic designers. It is
not good for everywhere but in Ontario if you want to say that
you are a graphic designer, you have to pass an examination
and the approval of a professional organisation. Now once
they did that and since you have to be a part of a professional
organisation, it gives them cloud and power. So what they
have in theory is that in three to five years, they can say lets
see if you are still competent. Did you take a course? Did you
do this and that? Yes, and than we approve you once again,
you have our confirmation.
Now that is part of lifetime learning. And they force you
to learn. That might be good for Ontario, so what you
say is I think a part of culture of lifetime learning. I think
it is everything.
SS: I think it is more of an ingredient at this point before
the culture is built. If from today we ask our children
what did you learn last evening every morning, they realise
that they learn something on a daily basis. By the
time they are forty, it becomes natural. Then we need
this evaluation. But at this point maybe we need it until
forty years from now. When we do not need it anymore
we can get rid of it.
AS: I think we were talking about systems and formalisations
at the same time you brought up the term called
currency as a metaphor for how to handle credits.
We all know how that works with likes or dislikes on
Facebook and such. I would like to ask Cihan because I
think that our discussions are based on a very orthodox
education as well as credits and actions. With your
profile could you explain where did you come from and
how did you spent one year without electricity? You do
something very different and might have some ideas
on how things could be very very differently. What is a
competence for you? How do you recognise it, yourself
along with the abilities you have on each other? I think
you have a lot to say so I ask you to give a short review
of yesterday.
Cihan Çankaya (CÇ): In our case, we have more practical
things. The most important thing for us first, is to
see past works. This is the most important part actually
but sometimes in cases like these, we fail as these works
can be bad but presented good. When we first started
with Decol, we had trusted to our showreels on evaluating
how we did and called in the past. We give credits
to showreels. But then we saw that sometimes showreels
does not work because some bad works were being
presented in a good presentation. Then we started
to work together for a while to give tasks to the new
comers. This is what we are applying to our works by
our people. I do not know much about formal education
systems and how do academic ideas work but, I know
much on the practical things.
Aslı Kıyak İngin (AKİ): How does the system work in
your practice?
CÇ: It is so important to see a finished work. If you want
to credit some people, you need to see some finished
work. It is the most important. Idea is not enough.
We are working on digital production so we see it on
computer systems such as a 3D model or an animation.
Because sometimes you ask people if they know your
software. If they do, then it means he or she is capable.
HE: Can I ask a question? Can you evaluate what he
or she did since you are competent? You are doing this
work professionally. You can least get an impression if it
is a good job or not. But you still need another measurement
to get an impression.