Speculative architecture as a critical and creative act in the architectural learning environment

In a world of continuous and rapid evolution, inevitably, the roles of the architectural design has moved beyond the boundaries and capabilities of the discipline to stay current. In the meantime, against numerous problems that the world is witnessing, the architectural design has been responsible for taking positions and actions, together with responding constantly changing conditions. So, in the first quarter of the 21st century, the emerging approaches that are aware of these roles and responsibilities of the discipline and push the limits of it have become essential for today's architectural practice and discourse. Speculative architecture is one of these approaches, which proposes a visionary understanding to explore the possibilities of architecture, paying regard today's heterogeneous environment. This design practise is based on a critical and creative act and an open-ended field of inquiry. Moreover, it particularly claims that architecture is not just an act of construction, but also has a role as a facilitator of thinking on the vision of the society and the world in the way of bringing alternative values, forms, and representations out. The thesis focuses on exploring and discussing the concept of speculative architecture, which presents potential by pushing the boundaries and capabilities of architectural design and uncovering the invisible qualities of architecture. It also asserts that the architectural learning environment is the most effective place to bring out this understanding, since it is a multi-layered and experimental research medium. The fact remains that architectural education has the chance to be free, and also the responsibility in both design and research to adapt today's social, physical, and digital conditions, unlike the profession. In this respect, the scope of the study is on comprehending speculative architecture and scrutinize the potentials and effects of it in the educational context. After conducting a comprehensive study to form a theorethical framework for speculative architecture, the thesis examines the speculative proposals, developed at the 2020-2021 Diploma Studio, MİM 402 Architectural Design Studio VIII, at TOBB, ETU, Department of Architecture, as the relevant cases, to identify the approach' contributions to the architectural learning environment. Embracing speculative architecture thinking, the Diploma Studio prepare an environment apt to enhance the architecture student's ability to think critically and encourages a designerly position by triggering the fundamentals of architectural thinking. So, the Diploma Studio outputs make able to obtain an in-depth evaluation of the potentials speculative architecture in the architectural learning environment presents.