Stages of renewal

Type | Scenography design/public space    Year | 2025    Project site | Gümüşlük, Turkey

Client | Gümüşlük International Classical Music Festival

Design&Construction: Studio-Method, Tolga Koloğlu,
Collective Processes Manager/Technical and creative advice: Alma Kelber
Collaborator/Technical and creative advice: Yunus Emre Avcı
Volunteers: Aleyna Özgenç, Beyza Nur Akdeniz, Beste Dündar, Burcu Kayhan, Eda Aygün, Elif Begüm Kankaynar, Eylül Deniz Akkuzu, Helin Terzioğlu and Zehra Uğuten.

Built from waste and second-hand materials sourced across Bodrum, the project is a research–design–education program supported by the French Embassy. It responds to mass tourism, pressure on natural heritage, and weak waste systems by making circular design public, functional, and beautiful. Co-produced with municipalities, landfills, shipyards, craftspeople, students, and festival partners, the design was shaped by what was found and built collectively. Open, modular, and detachable, the platform lets structure be floor and scenography at once, limiting visual noise in elevation to foreground the sea and sun as backdrops. The columns archive local construction waste; their bases—cast in sand moulds on-site with demolition rubble—quietly echo nearby ruins and the fragile link between cultural and natural heritage.

Embracing trial-and-error and low-tech joints, the project treats uncertainty as a design tool and construction as a social act. By day, it hosts performances, lounging, and shade for animals escaping the hot Mediterranean sun; by night, it becomes a seating and dance floor. Stages of Renewal explores post-capitalist playscapes: technique as a means, not an end, and pleasure, care, community, and shared purpose as essentials, not luxuries. The project explores how work and leisure intertwine, and how joy, creativity, and solidarity can be measures of value.