Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Tamlyn Shimizu: Welcome to Smart in the City, the BABLE podcast where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations.
I am your host Tamlyn Shimizu and I hope you will enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Smart in the City is brought to you by BABLE Smart Cities. We enable processes from research and strategy development to co creation and implementation. To learn more about us, please visit the BABLE platform at bable-smartcities.eu.
Welcome back to another episode of Smart in the City everyone. This is a special episode hosted by one of my colleagues. This time hosted by our CEO and founder Alexander Schmidt. I hope you enjoyed the change in voice and pace and I will catch you next time.
[00:01:03] Alexander Schmidt: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Neext Future Summit series from an episode recorded live here in Berlin. We are in a lovely tiny house. Today we're diving into an important and timely how architecture can play a vital role in rebuilding and strengthening communities in the wake of disasters. Joining me today is Ayten Paşayiğit from SP Architects, a leading Turkish architectural firm focusing on post disaster areas. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:31] Ayten Paşayiğit: Thank you so much Alex.
[00:01:33] Alexander Schmidt: So before we dive into you and the activities you do with your company, what's the most interesting place that you have visited for inspiration? Maybe even lately.
[00:01:44] Ayten Paşayiğit: Okay, so I love traveling and I'm really enjoying a lot of places. But let me rephrase it, where I will go again and again it's gonna be. I think my answer will be Istanbul. Sorry to say that, but Istanbul is really beautiful and inspiring place where I'm living though. But additional to this maybe I can mention Paris as well. It's a nice and lovely city.
[00:02:13] Alexander Schmidt: My colleague Jeanne will appreciate that. Yeah, it's great to hear. Nice. So those are big and great and vibrant cities and also those that are prone to getting the one or the other disaster every once in a while. So maybe we talk about this later before we dive into into that maybe share a little bit about your journey, your personal journey. How how did you end up in the position that you are now and what is and then also about the company SP Architects. What is was it that you're doing every day?
[00:02:43] Ayten Paşayiğit: Actually I'm an industrial engineer starting my career within logistics company. Then I moved to a supply chain role in a global corporate company called Unilever. I made marketing and all these other different role in corporate life. Then I moved to my brother company. He's an architect, he's the founder. We started the journey with him. I mean I joined him almost more than 10 years ago and from that moment onward I just carry out all my know how from the corporate and global mindset. And we try to build a company, an architecture company to lead the market in Turkey and to open up new doors for our architects. Working with us now, we are around 200 architects. We are a great team, we are a great family.
We're trying to create lots of inspiring stories for our team and trying our best with lots of challenges that we are facing day to day.
And we are trying to also enjoy our life while we're doing that, which is very important. We should never miss it.
[00:04:07] Alexander Schmidt: That's great.
[00:04:07] Ayten Paşayiğit: So this is our journey and also I'm an entrepreneur. At the same time I'm trying to adapt myself with the new technologies.
So.
And again I'm trying to enjoy my life.
[00:04:21] Alexander Schmidt: It's great to have you sitting here with a big bright smile when we'll talk about the work of your company. So you're mostly active in Turkey or also outside?
[00:04:31] Ayten Paşayiğit: Our main projects are in Turkey because you know, one of the key players of Turkey is construction business. So there we have a lot of projects. So we grow very highly in Turkey.
Lately we are very active in Azerbaijan as well. So we open a new office over there. But also we do a lot of projects in different part of the world, but not as big as Turkey. We have projects in Germany, we did almost 7, 8 project in Frankfurt with our partner company.
But after pandemic, you know, things was like during pandemic, let's say it's a little bit slow down in Europe and now we are, I think getting back hopefully this year also we are extending our business to us and we are active in Middle east as well, which is, you know, we are kind of a bridge there, you know. So.
[00:05:30] Alexander Schmidt: But when we talk about the work that you're doing in like rebuilding communities and cities after disasters, that's mostly work that you're doing in Turkey.
[00:05:41] Ayten Paşayiğit: Yes, so far we did it in Turkey and Azerbaijan as well, which because you know they have some man made disasters as well. When you call the disasters, there are natural disasters and also manmade disasters. Right. So unfortunately we had a great experience of the disaster because we are in a region that we are facing those problems and also currently we are also meeting up with a couple of other countries to, you know, carry on our experience like in US which they are also facing different disasters unfortunately.
But for the last, let's Say four to five years, years. Unfortunately, Turkey start to face with different problems.
So currently we just carry on in each project different learning and we're trying to carry out that learning to the next one. And we are here today to raise an important issue that as a full community, as whole stakeholder, we should come up with a kind of a platform or a methodology that everyone can add up their learning and we should actually collaborate all our learning, create a kind of a methodology or platform which is reachable by everyone, should be free, which is the information now should be achievable and free. I think. So we can all take advantage of it, because at the moment of the disaster that you are trying to find a solution, we can miss some parts, which is sometimes sustainability, sometimes social impact, sometimes economical aspect of it. So I think to build a better community, to achieve all our goals in the world, we should collaborate more. So we just, from this year onwards, we want to be in international platforms to raise this awareness.
[00:07:59] Alexander Schmidt: I would really like to talk about some of the specific projects that you have worked on, because I think there's a lot of beautiful stories to be told. Maybe if you start with one of your favorite projects, what was the disaster, so to say, that caused it? And then what was the activities you carried out? And then the outcome would of course be super sure.
[00:08:20] Ayten Paşayiğit: Yeah, I would just want to give you a case study. But before to start up that, which is the one common thing that I want to raise, that very important aspect of the challenges that we have been facing and how we are tackled down in each of our project. Because what we learn, you cannot take the post disaster projects as a regular project, because the challenge of those type of projects is first, the urgency is very.
This is something that you cannot miss it. Scale is something that you should think about it. And the sensitivity, it's so important. I mean, you cannot miss out that the human perspective of it, because when you do a field visit, you might end up as an architect, which it's not your responsibility, right? But you might come up, meet up with a person over there who's already affected and lost their house and looking for a solution, and they're asking whoever comes there, okay, so you have to be ready to answer them. You have to think about their life before you, you know, do your projects. It's not, you cannot, I don't want to say waste, it's not waste, I know, but you cannot actually spend more time finding the best solution because you have to give them a solution, you have to give them a house. And we should stop thinking about temporary solution. Because when you look at the temporary solution, unfortunately, most of them is like we are creating more waste in the environment, which none of them is reusable. When you do all these houses now, we will start to face with the floods in Europe, right In Ukraine, war crisis is another thing that we have to help those people that move from there. But the houses that we create, the tiny houses, maybe yes, but how are gonna use them again so when they are empty? So this is very important. We have to quickly go to the permanent solution. And one of the main thing that which I'm going to also raise that one in one of our projects, that we should not create a post disaster buildings. We should not call them post disaster as well. We should not call the areas rebuild post disaster areas. Because these people already face a big problem.
And if you keep them living in a post disaster building called post disaster building area, they keep feeling that bad memories with them. Actually our job has to create them in livable areas that they can inspire to live. They've already passed in a terrible experience. As an architect, we should use all our, you know, creativity to find them a better living solution. So therefore, we just put a big importance on those subjects which I want to give you one very important projects quickly. Like, you know, unfortunately a year ago we just our disaster happens in one of our cities in the southeast part of Turkey called Karamam. That was the center. And after a month time our team was on the field.
[00:12:13] Alexander Schmidt: Okay, what type of disaster?
[00:12:15] Ayten Paşayiğit: That was an earthquake.
And unfortunately it affected a big area. We lost huge number of people. Every family is over there. They affected in that.
When we started the project, we have to think about like in to find a long term solution for all these residents, for the residents over there. But also we have to come up with a sustainable place and a safe community for them in the future. And we have to be very fast. And then we start to understand the sensitivity of those people over there.
What we did is like we just come up with a scale. We have to think about the city scale. And then we ended up finding a solution to their district. But we have to think about like all their environment to live as well, which the community is very important. So the first thing that we focus was to build a nice school over there. We just make it very fast compared to the other projects that. I mean, the housing are still under construction. But because the new year was starting and our aim was that to make the building ready and we achieve it last two weeks ago. The school was open.
You know, you should see those kids, you should see that building. You should see all these teachers that they are inspired. After a year time that they lost their school, they are ready to start to their education in a new and very inspiring. It's a very affordable house, affordable structure, but with our design factor we can just, you know, add a very nice touch of it. So all kids are happy now I believe we just touch that community, you know. So this is something that we are also, you know, inspired at the work that we are doing.
So this is something that I should highlight that we have to think about those communities, we have to never and ever miss about their life that they are going through. And as an architect I think we should find a solution.
Another thing that I should again mention here that most of our architects in the world that they are facing this issue has to take in consideration that when a post disaster projects happen, we should understand that we have to deal with lots of stakeholders. Okay. It's not only our clients and you know, the simple like people who are.
[00:15:15] Alexander Schmidt: Living there in that particular project, who was the client?
[00:15:18] Ayten Paşayiğit: Okay, so government.
[00:15:20] Alexander Schmidt: So it was a city government, government.
[00:15:22] Ayten Paşayiğit: Was assigning, but at the same time an NGO was also giving the financial support. So when you think about one project, you cannot say only government was giving the project. So like government buddies there, NGOs are there, financial institutes, community stakeholders, academic and research institutes should involve and international organization. They are just, you know, they have to look at the details and then some relief and emergency agency response agencies are there, private sectors are there, engineers and everything, media is there. You have to be very careful on your communication. Civil society organizations are there. So as an architect, actually you are a small part of it which is in private sector where you have the construction companies, contractors, engineers. But as an architect you have a small piece there, you look like small piece there. But actually you ended up to dealing with every single stakeholder. And you have to be think each of your step very carefully while you are doing the project, which was another challenge that we have been facing. But so far we learn a lot and we are happy to share with whole community and hope there won't be more disaster happening. Of course. But it looks like we are getting ready for future hopefully by avoiding all the disaster first. But if there will be a disaster, we are with communities, we are ready to support them.
[00:17:12] Alexander Schmidt: And that is a very interesting one. We all assume and that the data show that there will be more particularly natural disasters as well and the human made ones. Let's Hope that they reduce again, but they might well be rising as well. So how, what is different actually between the work that you are doing in the kinds of you, you have to react basically when there is a disaster. You said that one month after the disaster is when you, when you jump in, I would say the first month, then it's likely direct disaster response, like helping the people survive. So what's different there in the work that you do that, you know, you do when you normally work in an architectural company?
[00:17:56] Ayten Paşayiğit: First of all, we have to put much larger team there and the field job is extremely important over there. You have to be very sensitive and you have to think in a much larger perspective. So you have to assign much, you know, more experienced architects on the field and you have to be really responsive for any changes or requests. So I think one of the strength point for us in our team that because we have a very strong team and crowded team in different, you know, requests, we can react very quickly.
And the field job is the moment that we have to go and understand the need over there. That's also assigning someone on the field. Keeping them on the field is also very important because in our regular projects we don't do all the time like that. We normally go visit, come back and then take the, you know, because the situation doesn't change all the time. Right. But in post disaster area, you have to, to keep your team there, get the feedback and coordinate with the center team, you know, all the time. So this is something that we should tackle with a different solution. And you know, in each projects we learn something different. So I think what I see from my team, that people who's going there are actually feeling that pain and they are proud to be part of that solution. And I think that's also important. It's like it's not a kind of a 9 to 6, 9am and 6pm job anymore. Okay. So when your team start to feel the pain and also feel that joy that they are finding they are part of that solution, then there you start that good job. So I think that's also very important.
[00:20:19] Alexander Schmidt: And it's super interesting because that's. You said one of the main differences in that type of project is the speed and how things on the ground change. And you know, when we see these things in the news or those of us that have seen this as well, it really can change every hour. So how do you make sure to stay connected and kind of in sync with all the other actors that are there? You mentioned NGOs, you know, those that do the emergency responses, the city governments, the people, how do you kind of continuously stay in touch?
What's the mechanism there to make sure you make the right decisions when designing then the buildings and the structures.
[00:21:04] Ayten Paşayiğit: First of all, there should be a kind of an limits that some.
Something cannot change, okay? You have to. You have to put some limit that there are things not touchable means that quality. No. So there is.
[00:21:24] Alexander Schmidt: You should like principles.
[00:21:26] Ayten Paşayiğit: Principles. It's very tough and important principles. But you should not put very high principles because it should be achievable principle like in an earthquake. You have to be sure that quality comes first, okay? So that cannot be changed. But the rest you need to be flexible. You need to say, okay, because look, when the earthquake happened in Turkey. Let me take another aspect, okay?
Immediately the earthquake happened in southeast part of Turkey. But the fear that created all around Turkey was very high. And we face 15 times higher migration from Istanbul to the other cities. Because people lost their trust to their building, right?
Very interesting. And this is happening in most of the disaster area. When a disaster happens, any like wood areas and all the residents on that area start to fear that it can happen to their building. And then this is. That's the reason why it's a community thing, right? So when the fear comes, a lot of stakeholders are coming, politicians are coming, NGOs are coming, like a lot of people. And there are interesting private sector people are coming to take advantage of it. I'm not always saying good things are happening there, bad things are happening, okay? This is the human nature. So you have to be careful with some principles, but also you have to be careful to handle everything. Because look, we are not playing a political roles. We are engineers, we are architects, right? We have to make sure that projects are completed on time for those people, economically, sustainably and you know, socially rights projects, right? So you have to handle a different role. Actually you have to manage that conflicts very well. You should stop fighting for.
I don't want to say unimportant, but things which can stop your goals.
Sometimes you should say yes for some something. It depends on the area and depends on like insensitive sensitivity of the subject. Because it's all cultural, right? So in Southeast Asia and Turkish community, they are really, let's say hospitality is very important, neighborhood is very important. They like to share their foods with their neighbors. You know, the. When you talk with those people on the field, their biggest pain. They were told me that they were so, so sorry that they could not invite me for dinner to their house. That was the biggest worry. But that might not be the same case for let's say in North Europe because people over there is care about how they can, you know, do their morning run, you know, how they can start to you know, run, ride their cycling period. So these are the things are really important. So you need to look at the culture, you need to look at the people needs. Then you can say yes for a couple of things. But you should say no to some really strict principle. Then that's how you can manage it. You cannot take it as a normal regular project. You cannot say oh, as an architect, that's my principle, I have to do it in this way.
But that's not going to work because there is a different needs on each post disaster area and we'll not have.
[00:25:27] Alexander Schmidt: Time to dig super deep into some others. But it's such a curious topic and I learned so much about how you approach this. Can you maybe name a few more examples with of disasters that you know, you have been involved into and just maybe a few learnings of those.
[00:25:47] Ayten Paşayiğit: So you know, in disasters area the man made disaster is really.
[00:25:55] Alexander Schmidt: And let's make this concrete because that's a term that can mean a lot. So if we are talking about a man made disaster particularly what is the one you are talking about?
[00:26:04] Ayten Paşayiğit: You know, when there is an attack happened to that community that people has to run away from that area.
[00:26:12] Alexander Schmidt: Like a terrorist attack.
[00:26:14] Ayten Paşayiğit: You might always not call them terrorists because in other political things, but unwanted attacks, let's say because you know, I'm not really a politic person. You, you might not, you might, I might call them terrorists but that another, you know, the families of all those terrorists which they don't want maybe their kids to be terrorists, but they're also under attack because of that. So it's a very social subject which I have no right to comment on it. But of course there are terrorists which is accepted by a whole community. That's I agree. But you know, there are some attacks are happening within the city by itself. They're attacking. It happens in Afghanistan, it happens in Turkey a lot in. It happens in, you know, in different, you know, areas. So when that type of attack happened to the that region I have to look at as a structural buildings and the community first of all they are destroying all the monuments, all the soul of the areas. And the worst thing about it, the community has to leave from there. And bringing back the same community there is so difficult.
The fear is there. The years already pass. Those people, they moved to a metropolitan Trying to find their life there. And later on it's so difficult for them to come back. The young generation especially, they don't come back. So it's really interesting learning.
And sometimes what we learn, it's not always.
You might not always insist to keep the old because at the end of the day you have to build something is open for communities that people can live there. You know, we are not doing a monuments in whole city or whole district. You need people to go there and start to live there. And if the old population of that area which is affected and they change their lifestyle, you cannot insist to keep them, to keep their old lifestyle. You have to think beyond those limits. You have to seriously think about a social impact. You might bring up a new economical solution for those people. You might open up a new markets for them. You might bring up some organic, you know, food markets for them. You might bring up some engineering solution for their kids. You might start up new digital solution for the people. That's like for example in Ukraine, that's what I have been seeing that a lot of smart young Ukrainians are in the software business, right? So when you start to rebuild their cities, you have to think about that community, right? So you know what I mean? Like you, you should insist of what was there before. You have to look at the current situation. That's the one of the, I think the best learning that we can edit. And we have to tackle down the sustainability and energy solution which is not going to be done by architect or engineer by itself who's working on that project. Because when the time comes, the solutions are not enough. Like for example, we have, we can see now the problems that we are facing, the problems that we could not solve during the post disaster. There's a huge waste, a construction waste, you know, and we have no idea what to do with it. After a post disaster there's a building demolished and you, we make some research about it, you might play with it and not really economically profitable to do it. You might use in some materials, but at the end of the day is a huge waste, construction waste. So we need to find that solution as a whole community of today, where we are all stakeholders are in this platform. We should keep discussing in the future platform how can we find the more energy saving solutions. Because in that moment, while you are trying to find then solution to post disaster area, we don't have time. So those are the things that I would like to highlight problems that still we couldn't find a solution.
[00:31:15] Alexander Schmidt: And let's hope that someone that Listens in and someone here at the conferences has one part of the solution for this and then we build it together. That was really, really interesting to talk to you about that.
Before I ask you the last question that we ask all our podcast guests. Maybe inspire us.
[00:31:39] Tamlyn Shimizu: Inspire us just a little bit with a story, a quote or anything that has inspired you recently.
[00:31:51] Ayten Paşayiğit: Okay. It's a challenging question because I think I always look for inspiration moments for my life to continue.
But I can say like in that post disaster area that what I mentioned earlier, that the people over there, how they are overcoming that difficult situation and they find the happiness by holding each other that reminds us that we are human. That's something I think it's inspiring us as whole team and that keeps us, you know, working on our work because in daily base, you know, sometimes we are worrying for really unnecessary problems.
And then you understand when your life is on danger and when you lost everything suddenly in two minutes. Can you imagine that you are in your house with all your belonging.
You are really fancy with your older clothes, but you ended up at the street in the middle of the night with only with one T shirt.
Okay, that's something. And then your life just started that. Then after a month later, you still see a smile on that people face. Then you understand the life is different than your belongings, different than what you're trying to build. But life is all about to holding hands together to remember that you are a human being. So this is, I think that. And they are keeping holding themselves to nature. That's also another thing. I think that's a good inspiration for me and for all our team.
[00:33:56] Alexander Schmidt: It really changes perspective.
[00:33:57] Ayten Paşayiğit: Perspective, yeah.
[00:33:59] Alexander Schmidt: So very, very interesting. Thank you for that. There's a question we ask all our podcast guests and it's about a definition, a definition about a term that we are using a lot and very curious about your personal definition of the term smart city. What is a smart city for.
[00:34:17] Ayten Paşayiğit: Smart city, I'm just. Okay, I'm gonna just give it very interesting perspective.
A smart city can be only smart smart as possible people smartness. Okay. You cannot make a smart city. You can only make people to use smart the things smarter. Okay. I ended up having all these smart solution, but if my mom cannot use it, it's not really smart enough. So I believe we are taking some subjects very trendy and missing the human perspective. In my house, I love to use all these smart devices. I'm taking advantage of it. But when my mom comes, she hates it, so it's not smart for her. So I think the smart cities, the usage of the smart cities is like we need to discuss more with an adaptation.
When my mom start to use it then it is smart enough. You know what I mean?
[00:35:38] Alexander Schmidt: That is a good test for solutions. Thank you so much for your time and for these amazing insights particularly into rebuilding post disaster communities and I will stop calling them these waves as well. Thank you so much for taking the time and to all of our listeners, don't forget you can always look at amazing projects and activities by creating a free account on bable-smartcities.eu to find out more about smart city project solutions and implementations from all across Europe and the world. Thank you very much for listening and I wish you all a great day and thanks again Edward and for joining us.
[00:36:15] Ayten Paşayiğit: Thank you.
[00:36:18] Tamlyn Shimizu: Thank you all for listening. I'll see you at the next stop on the journey to a better urban life.
