Chambers Of The Past
Our thoughts, experiences, and subsequent reactions transform and change us, regardless of whether they are good or bad. We cannot choose what we will encounter throughout life; we avoid some things and willingly move toward others. These choices, escapes, and pursuits inevitably shape us in the end.
The 'chambers of the time' made of brick in Manisa are also products of many escapes and pursuits. This old-faced structure, which we are drawn to either by chance or consciously, can actually be described as a sort of sensory space.
Please, do not see this 'peculiar' structure, which is still incomplete, merely as a physical 'matter-space.' This structure was conceived to express forgotten various construction techniques, a sharp sooty moment from recent history, the landscape, fire, a city that has been destroyed, and a story we have personalized.
This effort can be read as an intention to create a kind of 'sensory sharpener' that will enable the sensation of some important events experienced in the past
For now, thoughts, processes, and works are scattered across this layered table. When finished, to meet in its 'chambers'...

Yalın Architecture
Founded in 2011 by Okan Bal and Ömer Selçuk Baz.
You might think that even though the office is named "Yalın" (meaning "simple" or "plain"), their work isn't quite that way. This is actually an intended and perhaps never fully attainable dream... The intention was to create work that is content with less but tells a lot; that is multilayered but calm; determined and simple. Of course, these intentions may not always achieve perfect coherence. Still, for us, the journey itself and what we learn along the way are what's important.
Our projects, ideas, and works have never been clear and definitive tasks that start in one place and end in another. Instead, they become part of ongoing processes that follow one another and evolve into experiences and continuities we sometimes understand while doing and sometimes after having done them.
We are a design team that tries to conduct and manage these processes by taking inspiration from the unique conditions and experiences of the geography to which our designs belong, looking to the past and trying to foresee the future.

Teamwork
Every project, of course, requires many collaborations. This collaboration does not only encompass working with different disciplines. We are talking about a network of collaboration established with our architect colleagues in the office, our clients, the authorities with decision-making power, and the people who brainstorm and sweat over problem-solving on construction sites... The sincerity and openness of mutual dialogue in this collaboration can bring the spaces in the resulting structures into reality and life.

Curation and Storytelling
When creating such spaces, it is quite important to understand the story to be told, conduct research, and establish a perspective that can evolve into spatial narratives. While this is sometimes a process we carry out within the office, we often receive help from curators who speak the same language as us, like Deniz Ünsal and Heval Zeliha Yüksel, in capturing and finding direction for this perspective.