Architecture Beyond Construction (original) (raw)
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Neo-Lİberalism and the Architecture of the Post Professional Era, 2018
ARCHITECTURE BEYOND CONSTRUCTION The modes of existence in today’s post-industrial, globalized, neo liberalized world are subjected to a constant state of change. The ways in which we perceive the world, communicate, produce and consume are all transforming. Architecture, being one of the fields of many human practices that build up culture, is no exception. As the modern, centralized, national state of the industrialized society is superseded by the post-modern, decentralized, global state of the post-industrial society, it could be argued that the discipline of architecture is shifting from professionalism to a post-professional condition. As a profession based on the corporealization of power, the discipline of architecture has been in close relationship with dominating power structures throughout its history. Yet it has never been focused on mere image production and creating exchange value to the extent it is, in today’s neoliberal political climate. On one hand, the globalized economy is celebrating the construction industry as a highly profitable means for capital accumulation. In the last two decades, while some cities such as Dubai were built from scratch, becoming new global business centers; some industrial cities on the verge of recession, such as Bilbao were reinvented as artistic and cultural hubs by inserting iconic architectural pieces. In any case, architecture have become a tool for marketing cities in the global scene; leading to a simultaneous popularization of architecture and loss of disciplinary content. This chapter focuses on the current state of the architectural profession and the practicing architect as a spatial intellectual in the globalized world; reflecting on the possibility of an architectural practice beyond the constraints of the construction industry. This issue is handled through a threefold discussion. Firstly an account on the condition of normative / conventional urban space making practices at the age of neoliberal urban politics is given; through the “construction” practices going on in the last 20 years in the city of Istanbul. As the cultural and economic capital of a developing country, namely Turkey; İstanbul has been going under a tremendous amount of construction work during the 2000’s. This quantitative magnitude is the reason why Istanbul is chosen as the case of this part of the discussion. Secondly, a reflection upon the conventional architectural practices in the global city of the 21th century is presented in order to understand the current condition, capabilities and shortcomings of the normative profession. Thirdly, the possibility of generating an architectural practice beyond the constraints of construction industry, having the potential to produce alternative spatial practices that could engage with urgent social issues will be addressed through looking into a number of global cases. Lastly, concluding remarks underlining the necessity for an architectural practice beyond construction is given.
Spaces of counter-hegemony: Turkish architects and planners as political agents in the 1970s
2006
The post war period in Turkey witnessed a phase of rapid urbanization that strongly shaped the social and political environment during the 1960s and the 1970s. In this period, marked by the extensive politicization of the urban masses, urban problems entered into the realm of daily politics and urban politics evolved into an autonomous realm of struggle. This dissertation project aims at studying the emergence and development of this struggle in the 1970s with a specific focus on the role of a certain social group: that of architects and urban planners. The main argument of the study is twofold: first, social movements that arose in the 1960s developed into exclusively urban forms, transforming not only themselves but also public conceptions and experiences regarding the urban realm in the 1970s. Second, Turkish architects and planners, homogeneously labeled as urban professionals, played a particular role in this transformation and contributed to the making of urban politics as an autonomous realm of struggle. Revealing the socio-economic dynamics leading to the urbanization of social movements that emerged in the 1960s, the dissertation scrutinizes a number of themes that appear as both the constituents of urban politics and topics of pursuit for urban professionals. The development of the professional identities of Turkish architects and urban planners are analyzed alongside the transformation of physical planning activity in the country. Additionally, the concept of urban politics is expanded beyond the limits of local administrations to include both the housing question and representations of the city as political issues opened up to the direct involvement of urban professionals. Finally, after historical investigation of the role played by urban professionals in the making of urban politics, their agency in relation to this specific domain of struggle is defined through the concept of “organic intellectuals”.
METU JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, 2021
There is a general tendency in architecture to insistently see the work and labour conditions of architects independently from “the production of nature as urban space” (Sert, 2020) embedded in the neoliberal capitalist economic order. However, considering the socio-ecologically crisisprone environments in which we live, understanding the complicated relationship among nature, the urban, and society becomes more crucial than ever before (Heynen, et al., 2006; Harvey, 1996; Smith, 2008). This article aims to question the common trend that treats the production process of urban space as if it were independent of the working conditions of architects. Current architectural theory struggles to find concepts for guiding the complicated relationship of architectural process particularly working conditions of architects with urbanization of nature in the 21st century. Accordingly, as specialized citizens, architects try to rethink ecological and civic imaginaries (Karvonen, 2011) for unders...
Reinterpreting the Contemporary Architectural Practice in Turkey in Light of the Context Debate
2013
Architectural production has always been influenced by the economic developments of an era and the national and international political dynamics. In this regard, today, globalization and the current state of capitalism characterize the various aspects of contemporary architectural practice such as commoditization of architectural objects, urban environments and experiences and strong expression of nationalist identities in the buildings. In the scope of this essay, several projects from Turkey and as well as from international scene are going to be discussed in reference to the broader framework of globalization. These projects are selected as the exemplary cases of ‘sameness’, ‘iconism’, ‘theming’, ‘revivalism’, ‘typification’ and ‘urban regeneration’, which have emerged as the major approaches in contemporary architectural and urban design. However, there is a lack of reference to the tools and means of the field of architecture in the contemporary discussions on the problems of t...
2009
, 117 pages The buildings of a city such as shopping malls, plazas, world trade centers, hotels or even residential complexes are not only alternative urban building typologies but they represent power in social, economical, political and even religious terms. In this sense buildings should not be seen as specific design and research areas limited with single building scale but rather should be seen as urban statements in city scale. However the eclectic existence of these buildings in urban fabric causes a series of unexpected transformations in a larger scale. The impact of a building in urban scale takes a very important place in the modern city-their architectural expression is not limited with their individual scale but rather it becomes an integrated part of the whole city which is open to transform function, infrastructure, architectural meaning, image ability and other social problems. This building behaves as a cultural and social symbol and it is inevitable to consider the design process as an urban experience. However many of the contemporary examples are designed as individual architectural buildings… The integration of Turkey, but especially the city of Ankara to the global economic network providing new cultural identities presents a transformation of the city which natures could be seen "in terms of rent theory" and makes v this city "a place of competition for profit." To better present these transformations one of the most important regions Eskişehir Highway will be analyzed for the power it reflects as the buildings are set on the two sides of the highway as a new type of urban architecture proceeding spontaneously and reconfiguring boundaries based on the limits of the capital. The limits economic power decides about social, economic and physical order of places shapes the city as an urban product to be sold.
URBAN - PUBLIC AREA ARCHITECTURE AS THE OBJECT OF THE POLICITAL IDEOLOGY: ANKARA EXAMPLE
IJAUS, 2018
Ideology is accepted in many studies as a notion, which tallies one-to-one with politics. That’s because politics points out a situation that is instrumentalised by the ideology for the implementation. The governing power implements its own ideological structure with political decisions. And the objectivation of these political decisions in the public area, its transmission to the society and the individual is performed through architecture. Tanyeli (2015) explains the relation between architecture, politics and ideology as follows; ”The habitual historiographic approach is that first definitions are brought forward on the ideological and political platform and architecture establishes spaces based on these”. Considering the fact that the general fiction of architecture is built on the space; then is the space, particularly the public space, a stage, where the political ideologies of the government are presented. The government applies on this stage the architectural style it has created and supports this style with laws. In this context, when we examine the Turkish political history attract the 2000s the attention as a period, where the efficiency of political ideologies were felt intensively. That’s because the 2000s point on a period, where the modernist republican ideology was intensively criticized and a relative break from the republican ideology was experienced by time. This period has a more differentiated appearance compared with previous period in political, economic and socio-cultural aspects. These differences are lead by the policies applied since more than ten years by a political party, which describes itself as conservative democrat but is associated by some researchers with the idea of Political Islam and has an Islamic and conservative approach. And the attention attracting feature of the policies in question is that it prefers a historicist and able to be defined as Neo-Ottoman approach instead of the modernist republican ideology. These preferences, able to be seen intensively in the social and cultural area, can also clearly be seen in the architectural character of the public spaces. The policies in question are being intensively observed particularly in Ankara, which is the urban, public space of the republican ideology. Ankara is a republic city; it is planned according to the policies of the modern republican ideology. It attracts the attention with its urban-public spaces, where the reflections of the political IJAUS 3,3 – 3,4 48 ideologies of every period on architecture are intensively and primarily observed. While this trend was followed from the planning of the whole city to the design of public buildings with the modernist ideology during the first years of the republic, the construction of the first commercial skyscraper building, the Emek Building (1950), representing a Turkey with changing expectations and world-view with the transition to the multi-party period can be shown as a sample for this situation. Therefore, the study aims to examine the urban-public space architecture as an object of the political ideology specific to Ankara. It will be dealt with the evolutional process Ankara experienced from the modernist republican ideology until present and what changes the ideologies dominating the last period caused on the architecture of the public space. The study in question includes a two-dimensional assessment of the change of the urban-public space. The first of these is the examination of the architectural attitude dominating the public buildings of the last period, and the second is the assessment of the background of the destruction of modernist building, of which the most were constructed during the first years of the republic. (It will not dealt here with the central and local administration dimension of the implementations. That’s because the same conception is dominating the process in question.) It will be tried as a result of the conducted assessments to determine the changes to the architectural features of the urban-public spaces and policies in Ankara and evaluations regarding the future of the city in social, cultural, economic and political terms will be made. Keywords: Ideology, politics, architecture, Turkey, public buildings, with 2000
The Honorable Exception: State and the Social Production of Concrete Space in Istanbul
2014
This dissertation examines Istanbul as a geographical and historical totality and focuses on four different and integral parts of this totality: its Ottoman past, its dalliances with modern planning attempts, the city’s death throes in the face of rabid industrialization efforts, and its first true real estate boom. These divergent parts are scrutinized through the relationship between the state and space. This work investigates the different modes a city takes under different configurations of a state composed of, but not limited to, cultural, ethnic, religious, class-based, formal, and spatial elements. By studying Istanbul alone, it is possible to gauge divergent trajectories of the production of space that the city takes. The changes in Istanbul’s state-spaces are studied in five stages: the first involves the urban theory that engendered my critical stance on Istanbul and the production of space and how revolutionary urbanism can be harnessed to a re-evaluation of a semiperipheral metropolis. The second part is related to an attempt in unraveling the early modern historical characteristics of the city and its overdetermining role in the formation of state mechanisms. The third part unearths the rupture that modernity instigated in the urban fabric and conjoining state institutions and mentalities that shaped the city. The fourth part focuses on the industrialization and population boom of the second part of the 20th century and locates the consequence of social developments in the urban space: the squatter settlements, the gecekondus. The fifth part grasps the cycles of boom and bust in the real estate investments in Istanbul and is concerned in the concrete production of space of the five decades since 1965. Amidst the interplay of various elements, the emergent middle class in Istanbul and its social and historical moorings in the urban built environment are revealed to be rooted in the erstwhile squatters, in the gecekondu areas.
Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture, 2017
Since the 18th century, the irritating but also fascinating scenes of urbanity-a complex phenomenon with cultural, social, political, economic, temporal, spatial, functional, and formal dimensions-have been described in literary works. Many seemingly opposite facts, such as individuality/society, freedom/loneliness/socialization, anonymity/strangeness/identity/belonging, diversity/chaos/segregation, indifferent city-dweller/initiative citizenship, have been revealed through literary works, travel and utopian writing, urban theories, scientific studies, manifestos, and newspaper articles. On the one hand, there are those who advocate a life outside the city because they consider the problems produced by the city and the phenomenon of density which they perceive merely in quantitative terms, as unsolvable problems. On the other hand, there are those who see the production of loose urban fabric as a solution or those who accept the (seemingly) opposite facts of urbanity as positive values and therefore support city life. All of these ideas are still as actual today as they were in the past. We are often unable to use our citizen rights to the city, to encounter different classes (social/ethnic/religious), to experience heterogeneity as an aspect inherent in city life and in the route of our daily life-following the orders of the capitalist system mainly organized around work-and we are often drawn into the same districts on the same paths. Our perception of our urban environments may get monotonous and shallow, but the irritating yet fascinating features of the first big cities still exist and may be grasped and brought into consciousness. Throughout their architectural education, especially in urban design studios, students can be encouraged to investigate the rhythm of their daily life, the conditions of their urban environments, and discovering the city as an intellectual and sensual programme, so that the phenomenon of urbanity can be grasped not just on formal, but on various other dimensions as well. This study focuses on the process and outcomes of two urban studios located in Taksim Square and along the shores of the Golden Horn in Istanbul. Taking the multidimensional content of urbanity into account, acquired theoretically through literary works and studies on urban planning and its history, the main aim of these studios has been the phenomenological understanding of the dynamic content of urbanity by the students. Through creative analysis of permanent/temporary spaces engendered by the diversity of user profiles and actions discovered on phenomenological excursions, students examine the qualitative values of density and global and local dynamics. We believe that designing spaces as "prototypes" helps highlight the multidimensional content of urbanity. The present study aims not only to highlight the multidimensional content of urbanity, but also to encourage its discussion in architectural design education and to emphasize the positive contribution of theoretical readings and phenomenological studies to urban design studios. The present study also aims to emphasize the beneficial correlation of global and local dynamics as the two faces of urbanity; important more than ever for the big cities of the 21st century if we advocate for a vivid and resilient city life and citizens.
Prospects for Research in Architecture and Urbanism. Ashraf M. Salama, 2019
Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, 2019
Abstract Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a brief review of the latest developments of Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research while introducing ephemeral observations on the papers published in Vol. 13 No. 1, March 2019. Design/methodology/approach Through a classification of topical contents and an identification of the procedures employed in the studies published in this edition, a reflective narrative on emerging concepts and themes is developed to acknowledge and briefly outline these studies. Findings The discussion conveys the multiplicity and diversity in architectural and urban research where seven themes are identified from 13 papers contributed by researchers from academic institutions in eight countries. Themes include spheres of inquiry; autism and the spatial environment; communication dynamics and professional practice; assemblage aesthetic and place attachment; housing and urbanity in Istanbul; placemaking and sustainability in the Gulf; and from the Doric order to State mosques. Originality/value Establishing key characteristics of various types of research and the originality and values involved would enable engaged and enhanced contributions in architectural and urban research. The identification of themes stimulates the re-thinking of responsive concepts and issues of concerns while invigorating future research endeavors.