Research-by-Design and Design/Build
I use research-by-design and design/build as modes of inquiry through which architectural questions can be investigated through making. Prototypes, installations, and full-scale constructions become research instruments for testing relationships among material, process, environment, use, and architectural experience.
Architectural Pedagogy and Construction Education
My research investigates experiential approaches to architectural education, with particular emphasis on construction knowledge and building literacy. It explores learning through making, constructive play, physical and digital models, technical representation, and full-scale experimentation as ways of developing students’ understanding of materials, building systems, and construction processes.
Tectonics: Theory and Applied Research
My research in tectonics moves between theoretical inquiry and hands-on investigation of materials, construction, and making. It examines how architectural meaning emerges through relationships among material, structure, detail, representation, and construction, while exploring how tectonic ideas are transformed through technological change and full-scale experimentation.
My research examines architecture through tectonics, design and building, pedagogy, and lived experience. Working across theoretical inquiry, applied research, research-by-design, and design/build practice, I investigate how materials, construction processes, representation, and acts of making contribute to architectural knowledge and meaning. My work frequently develops through collaborative and interdisciplinary forms of inquiry.
RESEARCH AGENDA
Ruination and Architectural Experience
Emerging from my doctoral research on encounters with ruins, this strand investigates ruination through phenomenology and tectonics, with particular attention to material transformation, decay, memory, and lived experience. The research considers the ruin not simply as an architectural object or condition, but as an ongoing material and experiential process through which architecture is encountered, interpreted, and transformed over time.
Developed within the Faculty of Architecture at Yeditepe University, this project aims to transform construction education from a predominantly theory-based transfer of knowledge into an experiential and interactive learning model. The project involves the development of modular, demountable, and reconfigurable physical educational kits produced using digital fabrication technologies and 3D printing, enabling students to understand building components and structural systems through part-to-whole relationships.
Through these kits, students can disassemble building layers, examine structural systems, and reconstruct them. This process supports an understanding of buildings as multi-layered systems while contributing to the diversification of “Design for Disassembly (DfD)” approaches at the educational level.
Rather than the passive transmission of technical knowledge, the project proposes a learning-by-doing environment that develops systems thinking and problem-solving skills. Reusable modular kits provide a sustainable learning environment, while the integration of digital fabrication technologies into educational processes strengthens the permanence and transferability of construction knowledge. In this way, the project presents an innovative, scalable, and highly interactive model for construction education.
Different aspects of the project were presented at two international conferences, and the project was featured in Türkiye İMSAD Geleceğe Yatırım Faaliyetleri – Sivil Toplum 2025 (Türkiye İMSAD Investment in the Future Activities – Civil Society 2025).
Project / Research Design: Bahar Aktuna, Esra Karahan
Digital Fabrication & 3D Printing: Sude Acarbay, Bükre Pazar
Yeditepe University | 2025-2026
3D-PRINTED EDUCATIONAL KITS IN CONSTRUCTION EDUCATION
EDITORIAL
Selected editorial work in architectural research and publishing.
Design Build Record
Bahar Aktuna, Yeditepe University Press, 2024
Architectural Studies | foundations • positions • words
Editorial Board, Conference Proceedings, Yeditepe University Press, 2023/2025
