Timbre of Prusa
Bursa'nın Tınısı (appl. in 2025)
Main Goal
Timbre of Prusa integrates expression, music, and design processes through a cyclical experience of collective decision-making and artistic interpretation. Grounded in interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration, the process draws on the creative and improvisational potential of thinking together. Binding and integrative power of affective assemblages generated through artistic processes strengthen creative collective ideas within the social realm.
Art Interfaces
Music, sculpture and literature.
Place/s
Bursa is a historical city where mountain ecologies, fertile plains, and Ottoman urban heritage intersect to produce a distinctive spatial and cultural atmosphere. Framed by Uludağ and structured by water, gardens, hans, and neighborhood fabrics, the city articulates long-standing relations between agricultural and industrial production, ritual, and everyday life where memory and contemporary practices co-produce urban experience.
Story
Envisioning 2050 required the active engagement of youth in future plan making. Rather than drawing them into conventional land-use debates, often shaped by persistent power imbalance, we invited young participants to reflect on life today and imagine life in the future through a creative, collective decision-making process.
The process was carried out through collaboration among academic professional chambers, local universities, civil society organizations, industry representatives, local government, and independent artists. This transdisciplinary framework enabled disciplines to move beyond their conventional boundaries, fostering creative thinking, shared meaning-making, and new models of collective production through innovative approaches, methods, and tools.
Through the cyclical integration of expression, music, and design, the process fostered collective decision-making grounded in artistic interpretation. This approach unlocked the creative and improvisational capacity of thinking together. By harnessing the connective power of affective assemblages produced through artistic practice, planning was reframed as a joyful experience, strengthening participants sense of ownership, enabling ideas to take tangible form, and supporting the creation of collective memory.
Urban decision-making processes guided solely by rational reasoning do not always produce sustainable or inclusive outcomes. In complex environments where diverse interests intersect, analytical frameworks can unintentionally intensify tension rather than cultivate consensus. Procedures designed to resolve conflict may instead sharpen polarization and reveal socio-economic fractures more visibly. We were motivated to question whether another pathway was possible, one capable of opening softer transitional spaces within fragile civic contexts. Could an artistic approach transform disagreement into dialogue? And can co-creative processes embody decisions as they are being shaped, fostering collective ownership and shared commitment toward their realization?
Timbre of Prusa establishes a hybrid decision-making field within the Bursa 2050 planning process, bringing art and science into direct dialogue. The program seeks to integrate rational guidance with emotion, aesthetic experience, intuition, and sensitivity. Rather than treating art as an accessory to planning, it positions artistic practice as an active medium of collective deliberation. Through shared melodies, dialogical drawings, and co-designed public installations, the process aims to cultivate empathetic understanding, strengthen collaborative thinking, and create conditions where future-oriented decisions can be collectively sensed as well as reasoned.
Timbre of Prusa integrates expression, music, and design within a cyclical process of collective decision-making and artistic interpretation. Grounded in interdisciplinary collaboration, it activates the improvisational and creative potential of thinking together. Music becomes a shared language through which participants articulate perceptions of the present and aspirations for the future. By drawing on the integrative power of affective resonance generated through artistic engagement, Timbre of Prusa transforms planning into an embodied experience. This shift from abstract negotiation to lived participation strengthens original and cohesive ideas within the social sphere, turning deliberation into a hopeful and connective civic act.
The process unfolded through six interconnected phases grounded in collaboration and experiential learning. Participants first engaged in sensory encounters and a silent urban walk to heighten perception. They then interpreted Bursa’s present through musical parameters, expressing insights visually and verbally. Future imaginaries were articulated similarly, shaping collective aspirations. These were translated into manifesto statements through group dialogue. Finally, shared outputs informed the design and technical development of a public installation, produced in collaboration with industry and civil society partners.
The program culminated at the Merinos Cultural Center in Bursa, where the collectively composed piece was performed by the Bursa Chamber Orchestra and the co-created installation was officially inaugurated. The event was presented to a wider public in conjunction with a press conference held by the Mayor of Bursa Metropolitan Municipality.