To Remember
I’m Esra Boguslu, a designer and spatial thinker with a background in architecture. My practice explores the intersection of material storytelling, speculative design, and systems thinking—focusing on how the invisible forces that shape our environments can be rendered tangible through space, form, and interaction.
I graduated from Politecnico di Torino with a degree in architecture and will begin my master’s studies at the Design Academy Eindhoven, in the Critical Inquiry Lab. My approach to design is both conceptual and grounded, combining research and experimentation to examine spatial memory, public behaviors, and overlooked infrastructures.
Driven by curiosity and critical reflection, I work across installation, participatory research, and conceptual tools to examine everyday experiences and collective behaviors. My projects range from reconstructing memory through demolished materials (To Remember), to designing physical frameworks for better conversations (Argumentation Sheet), to visualizing the absurd rigidity of time (The Calendar), to probing form-function relationships through fragile, symbolic objects (When is a Chair No Longer a Chair?). These explorations are connected by a recurring interest in how we relate to systems—be they social, temporal, spatial, or emotional—and how design can reframe those relationships.
I see design as a practice of uncovering: peeling back the layers of meaning embedded in our routines, cities, and objects. I enjoy creating interventions that are minimal yet conceptually dense, often inviting people to pause, reflect, and question the taken-for-granted.
I’m particularly drawn to critical, transdisciplinary contexts that merge research, public engagement, and material experimentation. Whether through installations, surveys, diagrams, or editorial formats, I aim to create work that invites dialogue and reimagines how we live together—with each other, with materials, and with space.
To Remember is a conceptual spatial installation that traces the invisible scars of urban transformation — from state-led demolition and redevelopment policies to broader practices that erase architectural and material memory.
The project emerges in response to the increasingly normalized cycles of destruction and renewal that shape our built environments. Its form is simple: fragments of building materials — concrete, brick, glass, sand, steel, gravel — arranged in isolated piles across a public space. These remnants symbolize what has been lost: not just structures, but layers of lived experience, ecological history, and collective memory.
Rather than being anchored to a single location, To Remember proposes a flexible methodology. Its core idea can be adapted to different sites — especially those in flux or at risk of erasure — allowing local materials and spatial narratives to shape each iteration. It is not a mass-produced object but a conceptual lens, a material ritual, a quiet provocation.
This speculative proposal foregrounds the environmental and emotional residues of transformation. By making the past present again — not through reconstruction, but through remnants — it asks: What do we choose to remember? What do we bury beneath new foundations? And how can material memory offer resistance to forgetting?
The work invites reflection, encourages local participation, and opens space for critical dialogues on ecological impact, urban policies, and spatial justice. Its future development could involve participatory archiving, on-site workshops, or collaborative mappings that turn fragments into stories — stories that refuse to vanish.