Mapping the Spatial Experience in a Maze-like Structure

Özyeğin University, Department of Architecture, İstanbul, Türkiye

^* Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract

This paper outlines the scope and outcomes of a workshop that used a covered traditional marketplace as a learning environment, interrelating GPS tracking and psychogeographic mapping into architectural education. The study documents a 10-day research internship in which 11 first-year architecture students navigated Istanbul's Grand Bazaar using Mergin Maps GPS tracking, along with drawings, collages, photographs, and annotations. Employing the dérive methodology, the students walked between assigned gates without navigation aids, documenting their embodied experiences through the bazaar's complex street structure. Data was synthesized into individual journey maps and a collective exhibition using sewing threads in different colors on a 2×A0 map. The outcomes demonstrate that GPS-tracked dérive produces both quantifiable navigation data and phenomenological documentation. Participants who had completed only their first year of architectural education developed diverse representational strategies, including scent-based navigation maps, motif-focused spatial continuity diagrams, and product-oriented collages that translate embodied experience into architectural documentation despite limited representational abilities. The study emphasizes the potential impact of engaging with a unique cultural heritage—one that influences the senses and emotions through its dense layering of sensory stimuli, presents complexities that require constant awareness, and embodies inherent uncertainties and a mysterious atmosphere—on participants as a psychogeographic experience.