The Floating Slum House models two important characteristics of Istanbul: movement and unplanned architecture. It is quite obvious that at the time it was realized the work was visibly related to the phenomenon of migration from the countryside and urbanization; and within today’s context it is related to the results of the urban trasformation policies and the mass reaction to it. In Turkish art, lots of works touching upon this subject have been and still continue to be produced. Another important point that makes this project special is that it “works” directly inside life.

​

                The fact that the Floating Slum House is a project realized not through representation but as a performance makes it a ready object that has been reproduced without completely losing its architectural functionality. This object prefers to directly exist inside life in an organic way and create its own value mechanism instead of descending to life or reflecting it, with reference to the familiar differentiation between art and life. The Floating Slum House is a project comprising a whole with its sketches, production stages, documents and the “life” within which the artists lived for 10 days, and as a closed system, the whole project directly makes use of the city and its possibilities instead of the exhibition spaces. When viewed from this aspect, it is possible to state that the multidisciplinarity between architecture, engineering, social sciences and art is not limited to the transfer of indicators but is a special experiment to make their exact implementations. Also succeeding in creating the functional attitude politically, the work violates the geographical borders imposed by urban policies and decides itself where to be located inside the city.

​

                The surrealist state of the house floating on the sea is indeed a phenomenon matched exactly with the unreality of the wild policy implementations taking place in Istanbul. The same unreality is present both in the central importance of the Bosphorus in urbanization and in the turning into reality of a geography without a basis and a subsiding ground not as a metaphor but as a house floating house on the water.