Workshop: In Between City, Soil, and Community: Learning from the Historic Piyalepaşa Bostanı
Updated: Jul 9
25.07-01.08.2026
Location: Salt Beyoğlu Kitchen and Piyalepaşa Bostanı, Istanbul
Instructors: Aslı Kıyak İngin & Sena Biliş Özgün
Collaboration: Bediz Yılmaz & Mina Öner
The workshop will take place within the scope of the Practice Matters project, developed in collaboration with IASPIS and Salt.
Participation: Free of charge; full participation for 8 days is expected.
Application Deadline: July 20, at 22.00
Announcement of Results: Candidates will be notified by e-mail on July 22.
The eight-day research, documentation, and production workshop titled “In Between City, Soil, and Community: Learning from the Historic Piyalepaşa Bostanı” will take place between July 25 and August 1, 2026, at Salt Beyoğlu Kitchen and the Historic Piyalepaşa Bostanı.
The workshop addresses spaces of food production in the city through their ecological, social, spatial, and cultural layers. The program will be facilitated by architect and educator Aslı Kıyak İngin and permaculture designer and interior architect Sena Biliş Özgün, in collaboration with Piyalepaşa Bostanı volunteer and urban farmer Bediz Yılmaz and architect Mina Öner, one of the founders of Poçolana Works.
What can bostans, which have sustained their existence for centuries, tell us today about cities and the future? What can we learn from bostans as a practice of solidarity, care, production, and organization? The workshop opens these questions to discussion by collectively experiencing, researching, and producing in the Historic Piyalepaşa Bostanı. It approaches the bostan not only as a place where agricultural production takes place, but as a living urban ecosystem shaped at the intersection of soil, labor, food, ecology, memory, local knowledge, neighborhood relations, and everyday life.
Bringing together research-based production and on-site practice, the workshop aims to support collective knowledge production, place-based and mutual learning processes. Participants will be involved in the process not only as researchers and observers, but also as active actors who contribute to the care and continuity of the bostan.
Throughout the workshop, methods such as field research, participant observation, interviews, mapping, and digital-analog documentation will be used; meetings with different bostan initiatives and food collectives will be held.
Participation is limited to 16 people and is free of charge. The workshop is open to everyone interested in the subject; applications from actors of food and bostan collectives, as well as students and recent graduates of faculties of architecture and design, will be prioritized. Participants are expected to be open to fieldwork, walking, observing, conducting interviews, documenting, drawing, producing, and working with real site conditions. The knowledge and documents produced at the end of the process will be shared as an open-access digital archive at inbetweencitysoilandsociety.wordpress.com. The workshop outputs will be presented at a public gathering to be held at the Kitchen in Salt Beyoğlu on Saturday, August 1, at 16.00.
Full participation in the program for 8 days is required. The application deadline is July 20, at 22.00. Application results will be communicated to candidates by e-mail on July 22.
You can find the Program Flow on the website: inbetweencitysoilandsociety.wordpress.com/programakisi/
