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As part of the United Nations Millennium Project meant to improve the lives of slum dwellers, over 60 students from around the world worked in Global Studio groups with professors from Turkey and other countries to suggest ways for the inhabitants of a poor neighborhood in Istanbul to improve their surroundings.

Istanbul's neighborhood of Zeyrek has a poor population of migrants and locals who primarily rent. Zeyrek was selected as a UNESCO World Heritage site in the 1980s because of its historic housing stock and a Byzantine church, now a mosque.

The convener of the Global Studio, architecture professor Anna Rubbo of the University of Sydney, remarked that the students were invited to work with the economic and physical problems persistent in the bottom 20 percent of city dwellers. Paraphrasing anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, Rubbo suggested that architecture and planning professionals, students, and educators should "come down from the veranda, and into the hut, the tent, and the slum," to understand the world the urban poor inhabit and to find ways in which their skills can be of assistance.

Students presented their observations and suggestions that included social mapping of pedestrian and other transport routes, the future role of children and their play areas, bringing attention to patterns of water related to an ancient aqueduct and nearby cisterns, identifying areas for small urban food gardens and possible market areas, women's roles and vocational or health needs, and increasing areas for congregating as well as possibly developing new housing types for the streets.

After a community review of the student proposals, there was a public design review during which distinguished jurors offered several cautions. What is to be done about the gentrification that was sure to follow neighborhood improvements? Have the students realized that all architecture and planning is political? And what would the next steps be?

Throughout the UIA 2005 Istanbul World Congress, different forms of sustainability, community planning, economics, and a can-do/ must-do attitude were often put forth as a means to educate and to proactively encourage the students of architecture, design, and city planning to analyze their education, and to take an energetic part in working to shift the status quo.

The conference celebrated both historic buildings and urban aesthetics, as well as theories for sustaining cities and new ideas for maintaining social justice and actively maintaining a global discourse about the quality of our surroundings.

Alison Snyder is an associate professor of architecture at the University of Oregon. Her research applies an archaeological and anthropological approach, looking at how places, buildings, and interiors transform over time and how choices for change are made.

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Modern mixed with historic at the UIA XXII World Congress of Architecture in Istanbul when Vitra sponsored a party on the grounds of the new Istanbul Modern Museum. Photo: Alison Snyder One of the conference buildings used for the UIA large lectures and trade exhibitions near Taksim Square. Photo: Alison Snyder The 12th-century Church of the Pantocrator, was a composite of two churches with a chapel in between. Now called the Zeyrek Mosque, the monument is slowly being restored yet is still used for Moslem prayer. Photo: Aydan Balamir A street in Zeyrek was originally much lower. The buildings, despite a state of decay, are still inhabited. Photo: Aydan Balamir "Global Studio" suggestions and designs exhibited along the street in Zeyrek. Photo: Aydan Balamir View from the walls of the 16th-century Suleyman Mosque across the Golden Horn to the 14th-century Galata Tower now sharing a skyline with 20th- and 21st-century highrise hotels and commerce buildings. Photo: Alison Snyder   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.