![Sample our Built Environment journals, sign in here to start your access, Latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5926/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Built-Environment.jpg"})
Abstract
This essay discusses critical walking as a mobile, performative, and participatory practice employed in spatial research. It argues that in order to perform critical walks one must be disloyal to conventional spatial disciplines, to the city-ism in urban research, and finally to the practice of walking itself. Through a set of etymological inquiries, it emphasizes the connection between being an expeditioner and becoming a guest in the peripheral areas of one’s hometown. Ultimately, it claims that critical walking is in fact the incessant becoming-of-a-guest in diverse contexts which can be achieved through what is referred to as auto-infidelity.
Notes
1 Mimi Sheller and John Urry, “The New Mobilities Paradigm,” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 38:2 (2006): 207–26, https://doi.org/10.1068/a37268.
2 I have coined the term “critical walking” during my doctoral work. See Nazlı Tümerdem, “Istanbul Walkabouts: A Critical Walking Research of Northern Istanbul,” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Istanbul Technical University, Department of Architecture, 2018). I consider it to be in the same vein as “critical spatial practice.” See Jane Rendell, “Site-Writing: Enigma and Embellishment,” in Critical Architecture, eds. Jane Rendell et al. (New York: Routledge, 2007), 150–62.
3 For more details on the subject see “Curriculum Revision CURREV,” ETH Zürich, accessed November 10, 2023, https://arch.ethz.ch/en/news-und-veranstaltungen/lehre-forschung/currev_bsc-arch.html.
4 For instance, many of the formations and organizations covered in JAE 76:2 (Fall 2022) such as Aformal Academy, African Futures Institute, Floating University, Sakiya, but also particular chairs within renowned institutions such as Chair of Architecture and Urban Transformation at D-ARCH ETH, and Chair of Unlearning at TUM, Research and Development for Innovation on Architecture, Urban Design and Territory at EPFL, just to name a few.
5 There is an established vein in ethnographic research that uses walking practice as an investigative tool. For the theoretical framework of this vein see: Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire. A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso Books, 1983); Guy Debord, “Theory of the Dérive,” in Internationalle Situationniste, 1958; Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988); Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Randon House, 1961); and Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (London: Templar Publishing, 2014). For spatial research see: Lucius Burckhardt and Jesko Fezer. Lucius Burckhardt Writings: Rethinking Man-made Environments (Wien: Springer, 2012); Francesco Careri, Walkscapes: Walking as an Aesthetic Practic. (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2002); Alice Foxley, Distance and Engagement: Walking, Thinking and Making Landscape (Zurich: Lars Müller, 2010); Jan Gehl, Cities for People (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010); Jane Rendell, Art and Architecture: A Place Between (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006); Boris Sieverts, “Wie Man Städte Bereist,” ARCH+ 183 (May 2007).
6 Deirdre Heddon and Cathy Turner, “Walking Women: Shifting the Tales and Scales of Mobility,” Contemporary Theatre Review 22:2 (2012): 224–36, https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2012.666741; Stephanie Springgay and Sarah E. Truman, Walking Methodologies in a More-than-Human World: WalkingLab (New York: Routledge, 2018).
7 Solnit, Wanderlust.
8 Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking (London: Verso, 2014).
9 Nazlı Tümerdem, “The School of Site: Istanbul Walkabouts,” Journal of Public Pedagogies 4 (2019): 203–8.
10 I have initiated a critical walking research project that was formed as a spinoff of my doctoral dissertation. For more details, see https://www.instagram.com/istanbulwalkabouts and https://www.youtube.com/c/IstanbulWalkabouts.
11 Nişanyan Sözlük, s.v. “sefer,” accessed July 20, 2023, https://www.nisanyansozluk.com/kelime/sefer; A version of the passage about the word sefer has been taken from a previous article by the author. See Nazlı Tümerdem, Expeditions to the Near (Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, 2019), https://iletisim.com.tr/dergiler/kultur-politikasi-yillik/5/sayi-2-cultural-policy-yearbook-2019/10044/expeditions-to-the-near/11813.
12 Online Etymology Dictionary, s.v. “expedition,” accessed July 20, 2023, https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=expedition.
13 Nişanyan Sözlük, s.v. “misafir,” accessed July 20, 2023, https://www.nisanyansozluk.com/kelime/misafir; A version of the passage about the word misafir has been taken from a previous article by the author. See Tümerdem, Expeditions to the Near.
14 Franco La Cecla, “Getting Lost and the Localized Mind,” in Architecturally Speaking: Practices of Art, Architecture, and the Everyday, ed. Alan Read (London: Routledge. 2000), 31–48.
15 A version of the passage about the definition of a guest has been taken from a previous article by the author. See Tümerdem, Expeditions to the Near.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Nazlı Tümerdem
Nazlı Tümerdem is an architect and researcher. She received her bachelor’s degree (2008) from Istanbul Technical University and her master’s degree (2011) from Istanbul Bilgi University. In 2016, she was part of the curatorial team of the Turkish Pavilion for the 15th Architecture Biennial of Venice. She completed her PhD entitled “Istanbul Walkabouts: A Critical Walking Study of Northern Istanbul” (2018) at Istanbul Technical University. In September 2019, she joined the ETH Zurich D-ARCH Chair of Architecture and Territorial Planning as a postdoctoral researcher with the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship. She continues to perform critical walks in northern Istanbul and other locations. She is also part of The Great Repair project’s curatorial and editorial team—the exhibition at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and the two accompanying ARCH+ issues.