Projects / Workshops

   + Sümer Space
   + InterWoven Practices  
   + Steambending Workshops 
   + Çekmece Community Centre


Publications 

    + Çekmece Community Centre Guide
    + Sümer Space Guide


Exhibitions

   + InterWoven Practices Exhibition




About — 

Critical Craft is a Scotland-based organisation working to promote a more caring practice of architecture in a multi-scalar manner. Having emerged as an experimental research practice, the organisation now hopes to expand on its roots in community-building and knowledge sharing practices through making, while intra-acting with materials in sensitive and considered ways. 

Formalised as a C.I.C in 2025, the organisation places practices of repair and maintenance with equal standing as making and designing, recognising the processes of design as inexorably interwoven with material understanding and making technologies. Critical Craft organises and runs workshops while also contributing to research practice. In 2023, Critical Craft co-organised a workshop between İstanbul and Kahramanmaraş that explored textile waste, re-use, and collaborative weaving practices. This was then capsualised through an exhibition under the same name. The organisation has also worked on several projects in the post-disaster context of southern Turkiye, with organisations such as Hatay Earthquake Solidarity, All Hands and Hearts, ASF-UK and Herkes icin Mimarlik. This included the construction of 3 community spaces and publication of related creative commons licensed materials.


InterWoven Practices 

2023 




Critical Craft: InterWoven Practices was an intense 2 week workshop between İstanbul and Kahramanmaraş. The workshop aimed to build on existing work completed by HiM & KAF Kolektif in order to provide ongoing engagement with communities heavily affected by the Feb 6th earthquakes in 2023.

The workshop combined an exploratory practice led research component, with an in the field community engagement period. Embracing practice as research the participants engaged with the topics of weaving, waste and situated knowledge through building a series of rudimentary looms that then allowed them to (re)weave found, surplus and waste textiles that we had collected during the workshop.

The field period was based in Kahramanmaraş,utiling an existing space that HiM had built as part of their 'Post Disaster Reconstruction Plan'. The participants specifically engaged with local women and children as a way to try to create space for collective recovery as well as sharing of skills and knowledge. Together, participants and locals explored the potential of using waste materials to produce new textiles, rich with the narratives, histories and labours of the otherwise discarded materials from which they were made.

The workshop was conducted in collaboration and with the support of Herkes İçin Mimarlık and KAF Kolektif. This workshop was realised with partial funding from the EELISA Alliance as an inter-university activity between Istanbul Technical University and Universidad Politecnica de Madrid within the EELISA Circular Community. The exhibition will be open to visitors until the 1st December 2023.

Participants: Antonio Parilla Ayuso, Aslı Gökçe, Ayşegül Yiğit, Burak Ercanli, Ezgi Küçükpehlivan, Laura Perez Tembleque, Leyla Hepsaydir, Melike Beşik & Sure Tuna

Designed and organised by: Vivien Tauchmann, Ela Gok & Sam Price

Co-ordinated by: Sam Price, Dr. Aslıhan Şenel & Dr. Bihter Almaç