STRAIT is an exhibition that manifests the constrained and narrow Bosphorus Strait as a human-scaled passageway. By framing the geographic scale as an experiential condition, the exhibition opens up a range of aesthetic and political concerns for architectural imagination and the broader public.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the Caspian oil reserves in the 1990s, the Bosphorus Strait became one of the busiest international oil tanker routes of the world. Compared to the other routes however, the Strait stands unique by passing through the heart of Istanbul, a city of fourteen million citizens. The environmental concerns regarding the transit of colossal oil tankers through this narrow and difficult navigational route have been conflicted with the controversies around transnational energy pipelines and various other large-scale infrastructural and urban transformation projects.
