2020 was a test to human kind. The year we didn’t expect to live. Slowly, we adapted and found ways to pull through such hard times. One of them was building ARKollective.
Through the last 8 months, since ARKollective went online, we tried to decipher and understand the impacts of the pandemic in design, architecture and our daily lives. Through articles like Corona Virus Made Visible or Pier 39 – Covid on the Beach, we sought for answers and tried to find possible solutions to live in a different world.
But not all was about the pandemic. Whilst at home, we tried to travel between 4 walls celebrating and cherishing the wonderful sensations of seeing, smelling and learning from difference. El Cuaderno de Viajes and Travelling Sketches were articles documenting past trips to many places which became out of reach.
Not being able to go very far made us travel within boundaries and discover what we had so close and where we didn’t bother to go. Learning and studying was a good way of using the slow passing time of many days of 2020. We visited places commonly filled with hundreds of tourists and took the time to share our impressions with those who could not go there. This was part of the whole process of collectiveness and being supportive through the year.
We visited wonderful places like Troy and Assos or went to the amazing Dolmabahçe Palace and learned about the occidental influences in the Ottoman architecture.
ARKollective also pursued another of its missions on investigating and raising issues about the places we live and work, the buildings we build and strategies for a better, more inclusive way to live in community.
The project on the Abandoned Buildings of Istanbul and the more recent The Dream of the Green are proof of that research work.
Through these last 8 months, we counted with the precious collaboration of great professionals and hope to have many more through the coming 2021. ARKollective would like to thank to Claus Spix, Uğur Yavuz, Luis Esteban Polo, Miguel Garcia, Joao Boaventura and Joao Cruz Neves for their valuable insights and sharing their sensibility in so many subjects. Yet, we are mostly thankful to our many friends around the world that supported ARKollective by reading, sharing and following us.
We wish you all the best for the coming year.
HAPPY 2021.
STAY STRONG. STAY KOLLECTIVE.
arkollective.com 
Happy new year!! Abraço
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