Agroform -Aleyna Güneş
Agriculture is often seen as a practice of the past; a traditional, static and unrelated field to technology. However, in this project, I began to think of agriculture not only as a form of production, but also as a powerful tool that brings communities together, carries cultural memory and can produce innovative solutions for a sustainable future. The idea of a “Social Innovation Center” was born as a result of this perspective.
In a city like Kahramanmaraş, where both agriculture and industry are strong, the conflict or contact between these two structures caught my attention. Issues such as industrial areas pressuring agricultural lands, rural youth abandoning the land, and women remaining invisible in the production process are not only economic problems; they are also spatial, social and cultural problems. For this reason, I realized that the solution should pass through a structure that includes not only technical but also social innovation.
In my project, I focused on the relationship between “knowledge” and “soil”. Here, knowledge is not only academic or technological; it also includes local knowledge, experience, manual skills and cultural memory. Land, on the other hand, is both a source of production and a living space. This center should not only be a production point for agricultural workers; it should also be a place for resting, learning, socializing, telling stories and producing innovation. Women should be able to come here with their children, young people should be able to redefine agriculture and the elderly should be able to take an active role in transferring knowledge.
I designed permeable, open and semi-open spaces that reflect these values spatially. The center’s layout was aimed at creating interaction areas in a way that would evoke traditional village squares. I proposed a layout that took both privacy and view into consideration by using the slope of the land. At the same time, I established the invisible relationships that would form within the structure with the spider web metaphor; because sometimes the strongest ties are the most invisible ones.
During this process, I began to think of agriculture not only in terms of production but also as a **social interaction ground**. Agriculture is directly related to labor and therefore centers on people. With this project, I imagined a structure where people learn from each other, produce together and become stronger together. Social innovation here meant not only bringing technology; but also creating an environment that would enable thinking together, making decisions together and producing together.
The most important thing I learned while developing this project was that space is not just a physical shell. Space shapes social relations, provides identity and becomes a vehicle that carries memory. In this project, I realized that space itself can be a social innovation actor.
