In Conversation With: Deniz Galip

What was your first encounter with marble like? When you touch it, which feeling is strongest for you: weight, coolness, safety, or a sense of time?

When I was five years old, I was deeply affected by the sound of my mother’s stilettos clicking against the marble floor in a family friend’s house. It felt luxurious and mesmerizing to me. It had a very different effect from the marble I saw in the ancient cities we visited. I think that sense of fascination has stayed with me ever since.

If we think of marble beyond the idea of luxury, what do you believe its real value is: durability, memory, or the way it carries light within a space?

For many years, marble was always tied to luxury in my mind. As a child, I used to imagine that one day my office would be entirely made of marble. Later on, I realized how deeply connected it is to memory, nature, and human life. That awareness came a little with age; it was around then that I felt much closer to using marble as an architect. A natural resource like marble needs to be handled carefully, and that requires a certain professional expertise.

What challenged you most when working with marble, and what liberated you most? Its limits, its surprises, its rhythm?

The most difficult part of working with marble is that its physical mass leaves very little room for experimentation, while its place in cultural memory also makes it feel “heavy” and “grounded.” It carries a kind of authority, almost as if it were a material reserved only for the world’s greatest architects. At the same time, the fact that it can never be fully controlled because of its natural structure made it both challenging and extremely compelling for me. What truly freed me, honestly, was the marble-processing technology I came to understand through Alpay Mermer.

Where did the idea of Personal Altars first begin? Was it sparked by an image, a story, or a ritual?

When I injured my knee on the island of Patmos in the summer, a friend gave me a small plaque with a metal knee relief on it so I would heal faster. The idea was simple: if you believe, healing can happen more quickly. That plaque was a tamata, or more generally, an ex-voto. From that moment on, I began thinking and reading about the subject. I was especially excited by the fact that these small symbols, which I kept encountering in my travels, were connected to belief rituals spread across much wider geographies. While talking about it with Melike (Alpay Özmen) during that time, the idea for Personal Altars emerged, a project that would tell this story through marble.

From its first presentation in 2024 to the Akaretler Design & Antiques Show in 2026, how did the project evolve in terms of form, symbols, scale, or narrative?

In 2024, large-scale pieces were presented at the İzmir Fair. As we brought the project to Akaretler in 2026, we had to reduce the scale for reasons such as the structural limitations of the building, and we began moving toward objects instead. In fact, the project is still evolving toward those small plaques and handheld objects that were present at its very starting point.

In bringing the idea of ex-voto / tamata into the present day, what did you want to preserve and what did you want to transform?

Since the ex-voto is connected to a system of belief that has existed throughout human history, it is, in fact, a timeless concept. I did not want to transform anything when bringing it into the present; on the contrary, I wanted to emphasize this enduring human need to believe, and to remind people that it is still with us today.

Among the symbols in the installation, hands, eyes, keys, the sun, and birds, which one feels most personal to you, and why?

For me, they are all different visual expressions of a larger, holistic belief system. Depending on the period I am in, and what I need to believe in or heal on a given day, I feel closer to one symbol than another. So it is always changing. Visually speaking, I think the sun and the ear turned out especially detailed and successful in the final execution, so I have a particular affection for them. But that is more about the realization of the work itself.

What did the combination of seven-axis robots and handcraft make possible in this project? Do you think that combination changes the “emotional quality” of marble?

I was initially afraid that using robots would kill the emotion. But especially after observing the poetic quality of their movement, I realized that this fear was unfounded. Handcraft, on the other hand, completed the precision that the robot could not fully achieve, especially in very small elements, such as the tiny symbols on the front of the table.

How do you connect this project to Minval’s approach of repurposing marble remnants? Is “upcycling” here only about sustainability, or is it also an aesthetic position?

For me, as an architect, there has never been such a thing as an attitude based on aesthetics alone. In every project I do, the first question I ask is “why.” Personal Altars emerged in exactly that way: I wanted to work with leftover marble blocks in their raw state, without adding any chemicals and without falling into a false fantasy of sustainability.

What was the response to the project in the Akaretler Design & Antiques Show like? Where did viewers linger most, what kinds of questions did they ask, and what comment surprised you the most?

At Akaretler, the project received an incredible amount of attention, both on the day of the talk and throughout the rest of the exhibition. To be honest, people did not ask many questions, because I think they were able to form a very immediate and direct connection with Personal Altars, especially through the white marble of Alpay Mermer, which belongs so clearly to our own geography.