Snatch space productions in urban environment

According to the recent researches, a high percent of the population now live in cities which present itself with an urban environment. A typical citizen is born into this environment; in which they don't have an actual control or right to speak about their physical surrounding which are composed of the spaces proposed by authority in a dominating manner. The ordinary citizen sustain the daily life which in character is unpredictable, vague and ambigious; in this environment. This uncertainty of the daily life is the very reason why the predefined spaces with their borders and definitions offered by the authorities cannot fully adjust with the actions of the citizens; these borders and the definitons constantly get disintegrated by the interests of daily life, intervention by the user is an unavoidable feature of the designed spaces; in this case for the city too. Hence the citizens keep interfering and reshaping their urban environment; in order to create spaces of their own interest. To do this; the citizens generate spatial and constructional solutions regarding their concerns without a notable education or accumulation on the field of architecture or design. They actualize the possibilities and potentials by the virtue of their conscious that has an architectural essence in it, which this study aims to capture and demonstrate. This exact essence is thought to be the origin of the dicipline; like the primitive in nature when there was not a single building around, the citizen of today also tries to take opportunities of their physical environment; they make ways, they take shelter.For instance like sitting on a rock when tired; citizens use doorsteps, handrails to sit; use a park as a tribune of a stadium. They find, make and compose a space for their intentions. The only difference is the setting; the basic instinct of the protagonist seems to stay the same. Consequently; this dense, solid and predefined setting that goes by the name of "the city" acts as a terrain vague for the ordinary citizen. It is possible to find numberless possibilities in any given definition. Terrain vague; although as a concept that is usually associated with the form of absence, obsolete and undefined spaces; in this way can be experienced through the over-defined setting of the city. The citizen makes this possible by using the city as a material; how handy they are beats the urban entities' definitions, resulting in space productions which may be called as "snatch spaces" based upon their instant, cunning and quirky character. The resident sees a potential, realizes it and makes a production. By this way the city turns into a kind of physical fund, resource and opportunity for its residents. In this materialisation process; citizen degrades the urban environment into its very basic physical features like corners, gaps, surfaces, voids, slopes, heights and motion, flow, crowd, noise and so on. After this cognitive operation these basic features are taken to be used in establishing an alternative space for the proposed one.Besides the creativity and the cunning it requires and highlights; this kind of space production is the ordinary's way of having a say in shaping the city, which makes it quintessentially a political action. The ordinary informally takes their right to the city and its resources. Though the goal is not making a spatial statement; but just making use of an opportunity; spatially speaking, this action takes the given meanings off the predefined spaces, turns them into something else. Competency in shaping the surrounding also brings significant dominance in its wake and this can be seen as a victory for the weak over the powerful, and it might be considered as the only possible one. Residents keep operating on this environment and by doing this they also change the character of the notion of consumption. This process also resembles with the notions of language and talking; in which users create a saying with the help of the language and by changing the order of the words expression changes too. The citizens change the product, just by the way they are using it; in this case this product is the city. Urban skaters that are common features of the urban environment also adopt the same manner; they take the urban entities far from their definiton; and just by using them in their own interests they simultaneously add value to our urban lives. Skateboarding might be seen as a critical activity which is also in direct relation to architecture and urban space. It suggest that the city is not just a place as it is proposed to be; but in this case it can be a pleasure-ground. Just like the samples in this study it is also an offer to to see the city with a different point of view. The notion of "gecekondu" in İstanbul also might be seen as a product of the same instinct; using the convenient spaces, lacunaes in law and as a result generating an informal space by using these vacancies and also the waste that is generated by the city itself. The recent occupy movements also represent this manner; they include snatch space productions in their process; using an urban environment by giving it different definitions; changing the way it is proposed. Productions as settled as "gecekondu" and as extraordinary as occupy movements will not be included in the study with samples; because of the aim of focusing on the spatial productions of the ordinary. This familiar and daily samples included in the study demonstrates how the ordinary become entitled to receive a right to speak on their physical surrounding; namely the city, which is filled with definitions, borders and regulations that aim to give a kind of order to actions through spaces. In the study the spatial process of using an opportunity of the urban environment will be examined through urban samples that were collected with an autoethnographic manner, meaning collected from the routes, surroundings of the researcher's daily life. This manner was used as a form of self-reflection; with the aim of connecting a more personal story to a wider cultural, political and social meaning and understanding. Samples collected will be documented by photographs and afterwards will be examined through architectural diagrams in able to catch the essence of the forementioned architectural essence of the ordinary. The aim is to read this undesigned snatch spaces backwards with a spatial concern in order to highlight the production process of the ordinary citizen in predefined urban environment. While the mentioned interventions of the ordinary to the predefined environment points out its deficiencies, bugs, defects and failures such as complicated routes,insufficient spaces and excessive restrictions; this kind of productions also bring out the uncalculated potentials of a given shape. The ordinary citizen sees the potential and vacancies in this given, urban environment; takes the advantage and turns it into a living, running, active space to use for commercial or social purposes. From this aspect these actions and the resulting spatial productions might provide an insight for the discipline which in spite of appearance stands somewhat far away from the user; in this case the ordinary citizen with ordinary worries.