- Technological advancements—recognized as the driving force behind globalization and accelerating day by day—are causing radical transformations in all areas of life. These developments are restructuring the social, economic, and cultural environment based on their own priorities.
While these transformations allow traditional, local, and contextual values to be transferred to the global arena and widely shared, they also lead to the erosion of these values in accordance with the priorities of global culture, causing them to lose their authenticity and become subject to consumption.
In architecture—as well as in nearly every field of art and design—the forms and relationships of production and consumption are being reorganized, creating new grounds of legitimacy.
Consumption constitutes the primary environment for the existence of information technologies. The virtual realm, as in almost everything else, perceives design and art as a medium of consumption, aiming to make them easily and rapidly producible, controllable, and consumable for broad audiences.
The production methods that aim to meet this expectation prioritize concepts such as diversification, personalization, and identity creation to accelerate consumption, while at the same time aiming to keep these within predetermined standards and ensure they are reproducible.
In other words, concepts such as liberation, individualization, diversification, and originality are being juxtaposed with inevitably conflicting concepts like standardization, controllability, and typification for production.
To reconcile this contradiction, information technology re-functionalizes a familiar tool called the “template,” creating the notion of a “new template” that appears more “freely usable and customizable.”
From writing and drawing tasks to report and file preparations, from presentations to social communication, from shopping to information production, transfer, and evaluation—virtually everything now has a template. These templates are presented as tools that simplify our tasks and guide us, yet at the same time, are portrayed as platforms open to individual input, customization, and creativity.
Undoubtedly, the presence of templates in our lives is not limited to screens. From our phone conversations with digital operators to car dashboards, from the way we write messages to how we express emotions and thoughts—they have become rule-setting, defining, and tradition-forming across all aspects of life.
They are transforming into an integral part of everyday and real life.
The boundaries and distinctions between the virtual environment and real life are evaporating.
The phenomenon of templating, already present in everyday life, is increasingly encompassing all domains of living.
The templates created by the virtual realm and their role in reconstructing real life—as well as the reflections of this construct on art and design—prepare a multidimensional platform for discussion.
In particular, architecture—as a context- and place-based mode of production—is being redefined under the dominance of inputs detached from their origins in a globalized environment.
In the field of architecture, the boundaries of being contemporary, “authentic,” current, “modern,” or innovative are no longer determined by the profession’s internal dynamics, but rather by the templates that direct production.
Advanced template formats, while concealing the limitations and typifying nature of the template concept, attempt to blur the boundaries and conceptual oppositions between templated thinking and creativity/freedom.
The 2nd International Architecture Biennial of Antalya, under the theme “Template”, will explore:
The templates shaping our daily lives,
The structures shaping art and architecture,
Their modes of existence and legitimization within cultural contexts,
The production and consumption relationships shaped by these templates,
Their reflections at the scale of buildings and cities,
and will attempt to provide a ground for alternative modes of existence, anti-templates, and template resistance.
Within the richness encapsulated by the “Template” theme, many opposing or adjacent concept pairs and sub-themes will also be featured, such as:
Global / Local
East / West
Virtual / Real
Permanent / Temporary
With its culturally diverse structure, Turkey—and Antalya in particular—offers a unique platform for these discussions, one that can be projected onto a global scale.