2026




NEWS



BIAA Masters Dissertation Prize 2025

6 March 2026
My masters dissertation has been awarded with the 2025 Masters Dissertation Prize by the British Institute at Ankara.
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Urbanogram: Journal of the Built Environment

21 February 2026
My article about urban transformation and environmental pollution on Bağdat Street was published in Urbanogram: Journal of the Built Environment. This essay criticises top-down planning approaches that prioritise economic value over ecological and social well-being (pp. 82–89).
See the article

IPA Urban Agenda Research January report

30 January 2026

Istanbul Planning Agency’s Urban Agenda Research January report, “Blue Publicness in Istanbul: Encounters with the Sea in Everyday Life,” has now been published. This comprehensive study explores how Istanbul residents engage with the sea in their everyday lives. My contribution focuses on social life aboard ferries in the 19th and 20th centuries, examining how ferries functioned as a key stage for Istanbul’s process of modernisation (pp. 56-62).

See the report

Tactical Urbanism Now!

1 December 2025

Our project From Soil to Soil: Stitching the Food Cycle through Landscapes and Cultures, with Fernando Sanchez for the Tactical Urbanism Now! competition by TerraViva, won the Community’s Choice Award!

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Anatomy of Inspiration

15 November 2025
I was a keynote speaker at the 18th Istanbul Biennale (2025) for the Anatomy of Inspiration talk series!

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The Bartlett Autumn Show Book 2025

4 October 2025

My master’s dissertation was among the few fully featured in The Bartlett Autumn Show Book 2025 (page 18)!
See the book

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ABOUT
Zeynep Igmen is an architect and researcher specializing in sustainable and socially just architectural and urban practices, based in London and Istanbul. Her work engages with cultural discourses, environmental history, territorial conflicts across land- and waterscapes, and their intersections with material and immaterial cultures. She also explores spatial tectonics and hands-on, low-tech making. In parallel, she contributes to the Latinization of Ottoman Turkish documents and literature.

The Bartlett School of Architecture UCL 2024-2025
MA Architecture and Historic Urban Environments 

          thesis titled “A Practice of Fishing along the Bosphorus: Mapping Dalyans as Sites of Collective Making and Memory”

Uskudar University 2024-2025
MA Sufi Culture and Literature

           final project titled “Tawakkul, Vigour, and Building in the Narrative of Prophet Noah”

Istanbul Bilgi University 2019-2023
BArch Architecture (High Honours)

London College of Music 2007-2022
Classical Piano, Grade 8
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2026


An Academy for Unschooled Crafts


Location: Kurtulus, Sisli, İstanbul
Type: Academic, individual
Level: Bachelors
Date: 2022 Spring
Study: Public building, education

Institution: Istanbul Bilgi University

    In the envisaged center, volunteers who want to focus on local pursuits are projected to meet and produce together, instead of receiving an academic undergraduate education. The project includes a main incubation center, workshops with different facilities, formally or informally organized classrooms, exhibition space, co-working space, permanent offices, multimedia rooms and studio apartments for long-term accommodation - for masters or students who come for educational purposes.