A group of 24 architecture students from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, got a taste of TU Delft student life during a recent tour of the university.
The students also toured Rotterdam’s waterfront and participated in a workshop, in which they were asked by the municipality of Rotterdam to come up with innovative ideas for a major redesign project that will soon transform Rotterdam’s waterfront.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the group of students from the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara represent the crème de la crème of Turkish architecture students. METU has the luxury of choosing its 1,500 freshman students from the 1.6 million applications it receives each year.
This group of talented young student were in Delft and Rotterdam on a visit organised and guided by Ekim Tan and Emre Alturk, both former METU student and recent graduates of TU Delft. The group was accompanied by Associate Professor Gúven Arif Sargin, who was Ekim’s former design teacher at METU.
For their tour of TU Delft, the group was supposed to arrive at TU’s library on Monday at 11 a.m.. Unfortunately, they weren’t yet used to Dutch punctuality and were already 15 minutes late. Ekim however, having now lived in Holland for many years, is used to Dutch promptness and was slowly becoming frustrated. “They’re late, they’re always late,” she complained.
The students did finally show up. Although in their fourth and final year of study, they seemed quite young and not at all different from students at any other European university, with their fashionable clothes, lip-piercings and high-tech cameras. Dutch rightwing politician Geert Wilders would’ve been pleased to see these young Turks, as there wasn’t a single headscarf in sight.
One of the Turkish students, Sabri, immediately asked where the library’s wheelchair entrance was, and then was very disappointed to hear it’s on the side of the building: “In this way the handicapped feel humiliated, as they’re treated differently.”
The group proceeded to swarm through the library, photographing every corner of it. Although delighted by what they saw, their enthusiasm was somewhat cooled when they were told of this spectacular building’s downsides, like the noise, heat and constant leakages, which can make studying in the library rather uncomfortable. But the library was also too high-tech for the thirsty visitors, who didn’t have chip-cards for the coffee machines.
The students then moved on to the Aula to do some “beer coaster architecture”. They had been on a bicycling tour through Rotterdam the previous day and made sketches of their impressions on the backs of beer coasters. The results were quite impressive: some of the drawings were very artistic, while others were amazingly detailed, especially since they were given three minutes to draw them.
The bike tour itself had been quite difficult, with everyone complaining about the awful weather and rebellious bicycles. Some also wondered whether the racial segregation they’d witnessed in Rotterdam was intentional. Apparently, while in one of Rotterdam’s neighbourhoods, they had switched to speaking English, as they felt intimidated by some of the rough Dutch characters on the street and didn’t want to be identified as Turks.
Bread
Lunch is at the Architecture Faculty, where everyone commenced to fight their own private battle against their kroket, trying to figure out how to eat it. Asked what she thought of Delft, Gokcen said: “I’m considering coming here to pursue an MSc degree, as there are good opportunities here. I enjoyed seeing the buildings, students and the facilities. It’s all so big here, much bigger than what we have in Ankara.”
Some of the guys in the group had sneaked out to Amsterdam the previous night, and listening to their conversation, I didn’t need to understand Turkish to know what they were talking about: ‘space cake’ is understandable in any language.
Lunch was followed by a lecture, given by John Westrik of Rotterdam’s Urban Planning Department. He discussed the riverside urban projects of 1980-2005, while pouring forth huge amounts of information. The harbour was moved out of the city to newly created land in the sea . the Maasvlakte . which freed up huge chunks of land in the heart of the city. This of course will provide lots of work for architects.
For foreign students, the concept of creating new land in the sea is hard to grasp, and Westrik had trouble convincing them that this had actually been done before in Holland. The students added that Rotterdam didn’t really feel like a Dutch city, but rather more like an American one in terms of landscape. Westrik: “This is a problem. Nowadays, Rotterdam’s city center is all offices. We’d like to have more people living there.”
Two Dutch students from the Faculty of Architecture then took the group on a guided tour. The Turkish visitors were stunned by the sight of the facilities available in Delft. At the model workshop, these otherwise mature students suddenly turned into little kids, walking around with their mouths and eyes wide open, staring at all the amazing materials and tools that Delft students have available to them.
Even the most talkative students were now quiet, seemingly green with envy. But when told that having perfect materials also means that TU students must produce perfect models, their jealously subsided somewhat.
According to Sargin, the decade-long financial crisis in Turkey has hit the educational system quite hard: “Fifteen years ago we also had excellent workshops. But nowadays we have nothing that compares to what we see here. There’s always money for the military in Turkey, never for education. It has advantages though: the students of today are excellent graphic designers. They can make wonderful things with computers.”
The TU visit ends suitably enough with a borrel. After the borrel, I switched roles from journalist to city guide and recommended the Koornbeurs as a good, cheap place to eat. Once there, the guys were amazed once again: no bread at dinner? Cenk asked me to write the word ‘bread’ ten times in my article, “otherwise I’m not coming here to study,” he said, “because I can’t survive without bread at dinner!”
Turkish architect students in Delft. (Photo: Sam Rentmeester/FMAX)
It’s no exaggeration to say that the group of students from the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara represent the crème de la crème of Turkish architecture students. METU has the luxury of choosing its 1,500 freshman students from the 1.6 million applications it receives each year.
This group of talented young student were in Delft and Rotterdam on a visit organised and guided by Ekim Tan and Emre Alturk, both former METU student and recent graduates of TU Delft. The group was accompanied by Associate Professor Gúven Arif Sargin, who was Ekim’s former design teacher at METU.
For their tour of TU Delft, the group was supposed to arrive at TU’s library on Monday at 11 a.m.. Unfortunately, they weren’t yet used to Dutch punctuality and were already 15 minutes late. Ekim however, having now lived in Holland for many years, is used to Dutch promptness and was slowly becoming frustrated. “They’re late, they’re always late,” she complained.
The students did finally show up. Although in their fourth and final year of study, they seemed quite young and not at all different from students at any other European university, with their fashionable clothes, lip-piercings and high-tech cameras. Dutch rightwing politician Geert Wilders would’ve been pleased to see these young Turks, as there wasn’t a single headscarf in sight.
One of the Turkish students, Sabri, immediately asked where the library’s wheelchair entrance was, and then was very disappointed to hear it’s on the side of the building: “In this way the handicapped feel humiliated, as they’re treated differently.”
The group proceeded to swarm through the library, photographing every corner of it. Although delighted by what they saw, their enthusiasm was somewhat cooled when they were told of this spectacular building’s downsides, like the noise, heat and constant leakages, which can make studying in the library rather uncomfortable. But the library was also too high-tech for the thirsty visitors, who didn’t have chip-cards for the coffee machines.
The students then moved on to the Aula to do some “beer coaster architecture”. They had been on a bicycling tour through Rotterdam the previous day and made sketches of their impressions on the backs of beer coasters. The results were quite impressive: some of the drawings were very artistic, while others were amazingly detailed, especially since they were given three minutes to draw them.
The bike tour itself had been quite difficult, with everyone complaining about the awful weather and rebellious bicycles. Some also wondered whether the racial segregation they’d witnessed in Rotterdam was intentional. Apparently, while in one of Rotterdam’s neighbourhoods, they had switched to speaking English, as they felt intimidated by some of the rough Dutch characters on the street and didn’t want to be identified as Turks.
Bread
Lunch is at the Architecture Faculty, where everyone commenced to fight their own private battle against their kroket, trying to figure out how to eat it. Asked what she thought of Delft, Gokcen said: “I’m considering coming here to pursue an MSc degree, as there are good opportunities here. I enjoyed seeing the buildings, students and the facilities. It’s all so big here, much bigger than what we have in Ankara.”
Some of the guys in the group had sneaked out to Amsterdam the previous night, and listening to their conversation, I didn’t need to understand Turkish to know what they were talking about: ‘space cake’ is understandable in any language.
Lunch was followed by a lecture, given by John Westrik of Rotterdam’s Urban Planning Department. He discussed the riverside urban projects of 1980-2005, while pouring forth huge amounts of information. The harbour was moved out of the city to newly created land in the sea . the Maasvlakte . which freed up huge chunks of land in the heart of the city. This of course will provide lots of work for architects.
For foreign students, the concept of creating new land in the sea is hard to grasp, and Westrik had trouble convincing them that this had actually been done before in Holland. The students added that Rotterdam didn’t really feel like a Dutch city, but rather more like an American one in terms of landscape. Westrik: “This is a problem. Nowadays, Rotterdam’s city center is all offices. We’d like to have more people living there.”
Two Dutch students from the Faculty of Architecture then took the group on a guided tour. The Turkish visitors were stunned by the sight of the facilities available in Delft. At the model workshop, these otherwise mature students suddenly turned into little kids, walking around with their mouths and eyes wide open, staring at all the amazing materials and tools that Delft students have available to them.
Even the most talkative students were now quiet, seemingly green with envy. But when told that having perfect materials also means that TU students must produce perfect models, their jealously subsided somewhat.
According to Sargin, the decade-long financial crisis in Turkey has hit the educational system quite hard: “Fifteen years ago we also had excellent workshops. But nowadays we have nothing that compares to what we see here. There’s always money for the military in Turkey, never for education. It has advantages though: the students of today are excellent graphic designers. They can make wonderful things with computers.”
The TU visit ends suitably enough with a borrel. After the borrel, I switched roles from journalist to city guide and recommended the Koornbeurs as a good, cheap place to eat. Once there, the guys were amazed once again: no bread at dinner? Cenk asked me to write the word ‘bread’ ten times in my article, “otherwise I’m not coming here to study,” he said, “because I can’t survive without bread at dinner!”
Turkish architect students in Delft. (Photo: Sam Rentmeester/FMAX)
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