Firat Erdim

Firat Erdim

Associate Professor, Architecture
Daniel J. Huberty Faculty Fellow, Architecture
Signature Research Areas
Contact

firat@iastate.edu

(515) 294-8256

Campus Office: 0490 Design

Mailing Address
Architecture Department
158 College of Design
Ames, IA, 50011
Social Media

Education

M. Arch. University of Virginia

B. Arch. The Cooper Union

Bio

Research Interests

Whether with chisel, cast shadow, sprayed ink, or the towline of a kite, my practice examines the intersections of projection, place, and materiality to question axioms of architectural imagination. I read the “expanded field” between architecture, sculpture, and landscape as situating proto-architectural aesthetic practices in an implicitly cyclical cosmology of disassembly and assembly, and of the nomadic and the situated. The focus of my creative practice has gradually shifted from the disassembly side of the expanded field, working with saws and chisels to quarry sites and materials, toward the social and material assembly side, to create collectives and instruments of measurement, joinery, and attunement. Different sets of projects have involved research within diverse strains of knowledge and ways of making, including crochet, stone carving, printmaking, land surveying, aeronautics, sound technology & the design of musical instruments. Whether it is the line of a saw cut or of a walk, a sightline, towline, or the vibrating line of a musical string, whether it is taking something apart or stitching things together, a fundamental question is: what does a line know and how does it know it? This practice through drawing, sculpture, installation, and performance-based projects has explored the indeterminate zone of ruins, episodic spaces, and sites of suspended construction – in other words, states of becoming - seeking to bridge between the individual act of imagining and the collective act of constructing our environment.

See: www.firaterdim.net

Related Courses

Arch 530: Formworks

Arch 530: Vibrant Assemblies

Arch 540: Regimes of Perception

Arch 402 / Dsns 546: Bastards of Istanbul

Current Projects

Kite Choir

Walking Harps / Field Harp

Atmospheric Listening Stations

Peregrine Projections

Selected Uploads