Delft University of Technology

Department Member, Department of Urbanism

co-sponsored by International New Towns Institute, INTI

Thesis Title: Complexity and Design

About

Ekim Tan is the founder of the Istanbul+NL based city design and research network ‘The Responsive City’
[TReC]. The network focuses on strategic urban development in emerging countries, therefore consists of young and ambitious professionals from Cairo to Istanbul to Amsterdam. Ekim is an experienced researcher and designer in international urban design projects. Her hybrid worldview has been shaped by diverse cultural conditions of the east and west, islam and christianity, poverty and prosperity.

The friction between the top-down focus of design and bottom-up responses of users forms the motivation for Ekim’s work. Lately she develops a catalogue that addresses the precise balance of informal and formal aspects of the urban design systems. For this work she has adopted multiplayer simulations, or, ‘responsive city games’ as an effective method. With her last project, PLAY THE CITY, she aims to integrate the fast evolving web-based social networks into the field of urban design.

Currently, besides running her practice TReC, Ekim writes her PhD thesis on ‘design and complexity’ at the Delft University of Technology [DUT] and the International New Towns Institute [INTI]. In 2010 she will partner the Brussels based NGO citymine[d] with the EU project ‘Europe from the Bottom Up’

In the past, she has worked with Rotterdam-based offices Urban Affairs and De Urbanisten, as well as with Dutch municipalities and urban design offices in projects such as creating city vision 2035 for Rotterdam, Veenkolonien in Groningen, Homeruskwartier, an alternative responsive city scheme for the new town of Almere. She has been regularly teaching and lecturing worldwide; amongst which for the Aleppo University for Arts and Sciences, Rotterdam Architecture Academy, Amsterdam Architecture Academy, Copenhagen Business School, Middle East Technical University.

Born in Istanbul, Ekim graduated as an architect at Middle East Technical University [METU] with the Archiprix Award in 1999, and got her second degree in urbanism of the Technical University Delft with distinction in 2005.

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