Nominator: Murat and Alexis Şanal

Nominator's statement

Kaan is committed to architecture practice as a social and environmental action. This can be seen in his student portfolio through his professional experience and now onto his first commissions. His choice of firms to learn from and contribute to grounds a foundation to be successful in both design excellence and his values of ecology and social infrastructure. The projects of his portfolio show dexterity to move between scales and issues. High quality wall sections are coupled with human experience and living systems of climate and landscapes. I also commend his ability to communicate his projects as stories and narrations of social change and value to community and investment. He seems comfortable at larger scale urban issues, architectural projects with complex programs. I advise the greater committee to look closely at his portfolio and his drawings. They are careful, thought provoking and ambitious.​
The projects that stand out to me are EcoFlow, Look out, Forum Semtl, Each are unique in their scale and clarity of concept, but each have a very different and masterful approach to social experience and focus on the experience and socio economic value of architecture. They each also show a high command for materiality and tectonics of construction methods. There is also an almost atmospheric quality that he brings to the material choices and sequence of spaces. The playfulness of Forum Semtl to invite carnival like settings and new experiences. This is in contrast to the Look out which recognizes the harshness of the threshold between land and water while giving the users the anticipation and delight to be on a precipice. Ecoflow demonstrates Kaan’s comfort to mature into more expensive and complex projects with the extensive programming across the site, the variety of program scales and the seamless experience from indoor to outdoors. I find this foundation of purposeful professional beginnings will be reflected in his built work as he moves to receive commissions and manage through the complexity of team leadership, design excellence and the complexity of construction from start to occupancy. I imagine Kaan will also pioneer interesting initiatives and participate in the professional development of his colleagues and future generations. In this regard, I would like to nominate him to the BIG SEE under 30 for 2026.​

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ECOFLOW – REGENERATIVE LANDSCAPE FRAMEWORK

Located adjacent to the former Şişecam industrial facilities, ECOFLOW addresses a post-industrial void left behind by the removal of manufacturing infrastructure. The project proposes the ecological and social regeneration of this abandoned terrain by transforming it into a productive landscape. Rather than erasing its industrial past, the design integrates traces of memory into a new environmental system structured around water cycles, native vegetation, and collective use. Social interaction becomes the catalyst for ecological recovery: pathways, community platforms, and shared open spaces activate the site while reinforcing biodiversity. ECOFLOW redefines the area not as a leftover industrial edge, but as a living ecological corridor that reconnects people, landscape, and memory.
ENCOUNTER - MUSEUM OF FRACTURES

Located in Eyüpsultan, the project responds to the gradual loss of urban identity and spiritual depth within a historically layered district. Rather than proposing a singular object, it constructs a spatial narrative that reconnects fragmented memory, landscape, and collective consciousness. The museum is conceived as a sequence of thresholds carved into the terrain, where light, silence, and movement guide visitors through moments of reflection. By embedding architecture into the topography, the project reactivates the site’s spiritual atmosphere and reinterprets Eyüpsultan not as a frozen heritage image, but as a living urban memory. It proposes architecture as a medium of reconciliation—between past and present, city and landscape, body and spirit.
FORUM / SEMTLI 
Public identity materializes in neighborhoods, where individuals recognize themselves as civic actors and collective memory takes shape. Yet contemporary cities are experiencing a crisis of public space, as mechanisms of power transform even minor acts of dissent into polarized conflict. This condition erodes individual agency and fragments neighborhood identity. Set in Beyazıt Square, the project proposes a contemporary agora—an adaptable civic framework that restores visibility to the individual within the collective. Through small-scale, strategic interventions, it reactivates the square as a space of encounter, mediation, and shared authorship.