Tongtong Zhang: Winner of World Design Awards 2025. Once a lively hillside settlement of Anatolian Greeks, Kayaköy—located near Fethiye, Turkey—now lies in quiet ruin. Locals call it the “Ghost Village,” where crumbling stone walls and overgrown paths whisper of migration, memory, and time. The village lost its Greek inhabitants through violence, displacement, earthquakes, and looting, yet nearly 500 stone houses still stand today, forming an evocative “open-air museum.”

In my reinterpretation of this concept, the “open-air museum” is not a fixed route or checklist of attractions. Instead, Three landscapes areas —ruins, gardens, and fields—compose an experiential journey. Visitors begin among the Greek dwellings, wander through the domestic gardens, cross olive forest fields, and ascend to the hilltop tower where the community once gathered for celebrations. Without a prescribed path, they are free to drift, linger, and immerse themselves in the warmth of sunlight.

Sunlight, in fact, shapes the very logic of Kayaköy’s layout. Houses were carefully stepped down the slope to preserve each other’s access to light. This sensitivity inspired me to treat sunlight—an omnipresent yet intangible element—as a primary design material. Through creative use of reflective glasses, light is caught, refracted, and scattered, creating subtle transformations as the sun moves and seasons shift.

At its heart, the project captures time in two forms. The ruins, woven with olive trees, speak to deep, historical time—centuries embedded in stone. The captured sunlight, ephemeral and shifting, brings time to a human scale—a minute, a shadow, a flicker. Where time lingers, among the ruins, in the field, beneath the sun.

Project Details:-
Firm
Tongtong Zhang

Architect
Tongtong Zhang

Project Name
Where Time Lingers

Project Category
Landscape Design (Concept)

Team
Tongtong Zhang

Project Location
Kayaköy, Fethiye, Turkey

Country
United States

Photography ©Credit
©Tongtong Zhang

Tongtong “Sherly” Zhang is an award-winning landscape architect recognized for pioneering the integration of AI-driven design, ecological systems thinking, and cultural narratives in contemporary landscape architecture. A Harvard GSD graduate and licensed professional in California, she has led major projects across North America, Europe, and Asia at RIOS and other renowned firms. Her works—ranging from urban districts to ecological resorts—have earned international design awards and media features, affirming her influence as a creative leader advancing the future of sustainable, technology-empowered landscape design.