Selva Gürdoğan is impatient, ambitious and happy; her husband Gregers Tang Thomsen, on the other hand, is patient, laid-back and creative. Both having studied architecture, the couple met while working in the Netherlands and later they founded
Superpool in Istanbul in 2006. Gürdoğan says “Architecture was my childhood dream. I always wanted to design places, buildings in which people would feel comfortable. I think architecture is a generous profession. When people living in a building I design say the space is very different but also comfortable and peaceful, it makes me really happy.” Thomsen adds “I like imagining things and making them real. Architecture requires cooperations. I like working with a good team.” They work city-scale rather than on products. The couple says “We have worked on building and inner space projects so far. We have had many exhibitons such as Open Library, Open City and Becoming Istanbul. We did also city-scale research projects such as Dolmuş and Minibüs map and Mapping Istanbul book. In addition, we have a work on the future of Istanbul’s traffic jam within Audi Urban Future Initiative 2012. Maybe limits or boundaries have never existed in the world. Now, it’s harder to talk about boundaries. However, there are neighbourhoods that people are in daily contact with for different purposes. We think one needs to care about and get to know these small scales. Speaking of boundaries, we like to think that design and designer should have no limits in principle, but it’s not possible in practice. Everybody who takes design seriously, can undertake to generate ideas for different scales.” According to them, design is coming up with a good question and trying to answer it. The couple says “Imagining is important for the city. Asking questions about the city that has never been asked before is especially important. Asking question does not have to be about scrutinizing the negative things. Questions can be asked to arouse hope. Can we imagine an inhabitable, loveable city?” They accept that everyone has a dream and say “We would love to design a library for Istanbul. We are now working intensely on Istanbul Design Bienniale and Uneven Growth exhibition’s Istanbul part. Life is an experience for us. Our motto is ‘Live and Learn!’”
