Merve Bedir is an architect. She works with infrastructures of hospitality and mobility, in sites and towards collective intelligences and imaginaries for the eco-social landscape. She is a visiting professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne- EPFL Architecture, and tutor at Geo—Design in Design Academy Eindhoven. Merve is co-founder of Aformal Academy in Pearl River Delta region, Kitchen Workshop in Gaziantep, and Center for Spatial Justice in Istanbul.

Bedir’s recent design projects include a high-tech farm in Ningde, an industrial kitchen in Gaziantep, and Postane repair project in Istanbul, Turkey. She was a fellow/resident at Pogon (Zagreb, 2024), BAK (Utrecht, 2022), Alserkal Foundation (Dubai, 2021), Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, 2019). She co-curated Hands on/ Hands off (2023); Automated Landscapes (2017-19); curated Vocabulary of Hospitality Istanbul and Rotterdam (2014 and 2022); and uncommon river Plovdiv (2015). Her work has taken part in Istanbul Design Biennale (several editions), Urbanism and Architecture Biennale Shenzhen (several editions), Venice Architecture Biennale’s main exhibition (2021), Sao Paulo Architecture Biennale (2017); and most recently installed in BAK Utrecht (2023), and Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum (2023). These were reviewed in The Guardian, Avery Review, and Frieze Magazine.

Merve Bedir holds a PhD from Delft University of Technology, and a BArch from Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Previously, she worked as assistant professor in Hong Kong University, Department of Architecture. She co-chaired Design for Partnerships for Change panel of United International Architects Conference (2023). Her recent publications include “Kitchen Workshop: Cityzenship as Infrastructure” in Feminist Infrastructural Critique (2024), and New Silk Roads in e-flux architecture (co-editor, 2019, 2024).

photo: from the process of Postoffice repair project, Istanbul
courtesy of Emirkan Cörüt