The OIKODOMOS project has continued with its activities during 2011. Activities taking place during the last few months are summarized in the bullet points below, further information being available in the text which follows:

• the OIKODOMOS Fourth International Workshop took place in Istanbul

• learning activities at participating institutions have been conducted at the participating institutions around the issue "Proximity" in contemporary housing and planning

• the web portal look has been made more visually attractive and it's functionality enhanced

• the usability of the OIKODOMOS Workspaces has been improved

• presentations and publications about the project have been delivered

• new associated partners have participated in project activities In the coming weeks, two new events will be announced which will contribute to spread the OIKODOMOS project among the academic community:

1. An OIKODOMOS webcast to introduce the project to scholars interested in joining the learning activities in the coming semester

2. The OIKODOMOS International conference will take place in 27-28 October 2011 in the School of Architecture Sint-Lucas, Brussels.

• OIKODOMOS FOURTH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
• LEARNING ACTIVITIES AT PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS
• IMPROVEMENTS IN THE WEB PORTAL
• EASIER ACCESS TO OIKODOMOS WORKSPACES
• PROJECT PRESENTATIONS AND PUBLICATIONS
• NEW ASSOCIATED PARTNERS

A Joint Workshop dedicated to the theme "Proximity" took place in the Istanbul Technical University from May 2th to 6th. 45 students and 14 teachers from the partner institutions, associated partners and students coming from other Schools in Europe participated in the workshop. The workshop provided the opportunity to apply knowledge previously acquired in the preparatory activities to a specific site: the Göksu area, former Ottoman suburbs, located between the Great Bosphorus Canal on the Asian side of Istanbul. Students carried out two tasks:

1. A visual analysis to identify signs of proximity in the Göksu area

2. Mapping the concept of proximity to the site in order to trigger a transformation process. Further development of the workshop outcomes will continue in the partner institutions and will be evaluated by external reviewers within the OIKODOMOS Workspaces environment.

During the last five months, students and teachers from partner institutions have been carrying out learning activities on the theme Proximity in the courses and design studios taking place at their respective institutions and in the collaborative learning spaces of OIKODOMOS. La Salle has conducted a study on citizen's participation in the renewal of the city focused on the neighborhood Plus Ultra in the area of Zona Franca, in Barcelona. Sint Lucas have studied the area of Linden, a suburban residential neighborhood outside Brussels, to propose micro-strategies to reconfigure and re-optimize the area in a socially and environmentally sustainable way. IUG-UPMF Grenoble has dedicated an urban planning studio to develop metropolitan strategies to limit urban sprawl in the municipality of Meylan, a suburb of Grenoble. EMU has explored architectural and urban characteristics of housing which exhibit different characteristics in the city of Lefkosa in Cyprus. Within the chosen zones, the concepts of interface, threshold and boundary were applied to an exploration of arteries, housing configuration and typologies, societal hierarchies and norms in six different sites. The results of these activities was summarized by students and presented at the beginning of the Istanbul Workshop.

OIKODOMOS web portal (www.oikodomos.org) has been renewed. The graphic design has been upgraded, there is now easier access to the learning platform and to the blogs linked to the project activities. Information channels have been included on the front page to provide brief summaries of the project activities.

OIKODOMOS Workspaces has been upgraded to facilitate access of external reviews to the learning activities and their outcomes. Both registered and non-registered users can navigate through the structure of learning activities and tasks in the home page. This way, non-registered users can better understand the context in which student works are produced. Also, external users can now add comments to the work for students and teachers to read.

The OIKODOMOS project was introduced in February to teachers and the advisory board of the School of Architecture of Navarra, Spain. The project was presented in the GLOBAL TIME conference organized by the AACE in January. Two papers about the OIKODOMOS project will be presented in ED MEDIA, in Lisbon, and in ECAADE, in September.

We welcome the new Associated Partners who have joined the project in the last months: BTU Cottbus, Germany; Gebze Institute of Technology, Turkey; University of Applied Science and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), and Escuela Tècnica Superior de Arquitectura de Valencia, Spain.