Istanbul: Rooftop Room
Rooftop Room is a site-specific project realized for the 8th Istanbul Biennial. It consists of a tin roof constructed on top of a privately owned flat-roof house in the Kustepe suburb of Istanbul. After the exhibition closed, the family who lives in the house replaced the temporary curtain walls with permanent walls.

I was asked by curator Dan Cameron to create a project for the biennial, which had the title Poetic Justice. I received the invitation while in Caracas, in the spring of 2003. At the time, I was deeply involved in the Dry Toilet project, which Liyat Esakov and I, along with the local community, were developing in La Vega barrio. It became a matter of ethics for me that whatever project I made for Istanbul should be as meaningful as I thought the Dry Toilet was.

I knew from the start that I did not want to make this project in a public space.

I am aware of the fact that Europeans are unconditionally committed to public space, but this is something I have never really understood. Such dedication to the concept of public space has little to do with what these spaces actually became, that is, territories controlled by special interests. In my view, the European commitment to public space is largely symbolic and is most probably due to the reliance on the social state. One could get sentimental and look for reasons as far back as the Renaissance, when public space became a significant issue along with the democracy. A public square was intended to be egalitarian, free for everyone-consider the fact that the Swiss still vote in town squares. The notion of public space is linked with democracy and is, therefore, untouchable.

What I see in contemporary cities is not only a privatization of public space but also its erosion. In Caracas, where what little there is of the social state has been dissolving, public space is either lacking or abused. In the informal city, there is no real public space. All public space is privately negotiated, and vice versa-private space becomes public when such is needed. In the formal city, public squares have been invaded by hostile groups of people on a temporary basis, for instance, by Chavista demonstrators. Sometimes public squares end up being permanently occupied by street sellers. Temporariness, not stability, characterizes contemporary Caracas. While the Venezuelan capital might be an extreme example, the West Bank presents an even harsher scenario, in my view. There, the temporary condition is sealed behind walls while security measures are pushed to the limit. Both places are telling in the way they put an emphasis on private space and personal security. Could they become case studies for European cities, which have been experiencing the gradual decline of public space and are consumed by private concerns? Let me give you an example from Liverpool in regard to the imposition of private security in public spaces. In the Paradise Street development in the city center, the developer plans to implement a private security program; if successful, the city may follow its example and, possibly, use private security throughout the city.

For Poetic Justice, then, I decided to create a project in private space. I focused on a family. By making a project in private space, I pointed to the ongoing process of the privatization of public space but did not waste any energy criticizing it. At the same time, I pointed to individuals-the people who make up a city. If public space thinks of citizens as a group, my project attempts to think of citizens as individuals.

My proposal was to build a temporary roof on top of a privately owned flat-roof house. I asked the Istanbul team to find a flat roof where a family planned to build another floor. I presumed that my project, though conceived as temporary, would most likely stay in place, and this eventually proved to be the case. Orton Akinci got back to me, saying that they had found a family in Kustepe, a suburb of Istanbul, who would be glad to get a temporary roof. I flew from Caracas to Istanbul. A construction worker showed us around. The roof was quite large. We decided to build a seventy-squaremeter tin roof using metal construction. No plans were drawn up, and the construction was agreed on orally. The temporary intervention was approved by the city. During the biennial, blue plastic curtains were chosen to encircle the space, and it all looked quite beautiful. A plastic table and chairs-a popular style that has seemingly been around forever, were placed there. I never saw the completed Rooftop Room in person, but Orton sent me pictures showing how the family had subsequently upgraded the area under the constructed roof earlier this year. And so the project did turn into something permanent. I was happy to see that the plastic table and chairs were still being used.

Rooftop Room touches on several issues. This was a public project in a private space. In creating it, I diverted money from art to life. The project was not centrally located- Kustepe is an outlying suburb of Istanbul. Surprisingly, biennial organizers raised no questions either about the dislocation of the project or about the fact that a public project was being implemented in private space-visitors to the biennial could not enter the site. By making a temporary project that became permanent, I pointed to the legitimacy of so-called temporary architecture, which is, I believe, the most permanent aspect of contemporary cities. There are a few details that I especially love about this work, such as the temporary curtain walls being replaced with permanent ones and the fact that a private household was taking care of a public project.