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As with other areas of cultural production, in Turkey the prevailing theme in both the practice and the discourse of architecture in the 20th century was the tension between a desire to assert a uniquely national character and the quest to become modern by keeping up with international trends in the profession and by responding to the demands of an ever-changing global context. The balance between the two tendencies shifted frequently, remaining a constant source of debate throughout the century. On the basis of overarching similarities in the organization of professional practice and education, the dominant discourses in architecture, the types of buildings commissioned, and the identity of the clients, as well as broader issues concerning national and international politics, economic policies, and ideological orientations, we may divide the time line between the 1890s and the present into four periods. Longer surveys offer further subperiodizations on the basis of the identity of the architects and stylistic preferences. The early Republican years have been divided into First Nationalist (1890s–1927), First International (1927–late 1930s), and Second Nationalist (late 1930s–late 1940s).
1890s to Mid-1920s
The decades preceding the post-World War I collapse and subsequent partition of the Ottoman Empire were defined by turbulent wars followed by waves of mass migration, the encroachment of European imperialism, and formidable economic problems. To remedy these, the Ottoman government implemented various measures designed to modernize the state and its institutions after European models. Similarly, in an effort to raise the standards in professional education, in 1882 the School of Fine Arts (Senayii Nefise), based loosely on the Beaux-Arts model, was founded, followed in 1884 by the School of Engineering (Hendese-i Mülkiye Mektebi), for which faculty were recruited mainly from Germany and Austria. Foreign faculty from both schools were also commissioned for various projects, many of which were novel building types that housed some new function of the modernizing Ottoman capital. The Ottoman Public Debt Administration (1899), the Imperial College of Medicine (1903), and the Museum of Archaeology (1891–1907) were designed by Alexandre Vallaury of the Fine Arts School, and the Deutsche Bank and the Sirkeci Railroad Terminal (1890) were the work of Professor Jachmund. Among other foreign professionals in Istanbul at the time, Raimondo D’Aronco designed several pavilions at the Yildiz Palace, and Otto Ritter and Helmut Cuno were commissioned to build the Haydarpasa Railroad Terminal (1908). The professional sensibilities of Istanbul’s foreign builders differed, depending on their backgrounds. However, when confronted with the challenge of building in a densely packed city with a complex history, a diverse population, and enduring architectural traditions, they typically resorted to incorporating some Ottoman decorative elements into the mainly neoclassical decorative scheme of the interior and exterior surfaces of their buildings while adhering to spatial layouts with the recognizable symmetry and axiality of the Beaux-Arts tradition. Young Ottoman architects trained in the new schools or Europe also experimented with these ideas. Generally known as Ottoman Revivalism, these efforts to incorporate historical references into distinctively modern building programs were comparable to contemporary trends in Europe in terms of discourse and practice. This was evident, for example, in the similarity of the functional layout, volumetric composition, and handling of historical references in Kemalettin Bey’s Dördüncü Vakif Hani (1912–26) business complex and Harikzedegan Apartments to their European contemporaries and in Vedad (Tek) Bey’s Sirkeci Post Office (1909), which bears a striking resemblance to Otto Wagner’s Postal Savings Bank (1904–06) in Vienna.
The conceptual breakdown between the spatial organization and the decorative schemes (in Ottoman Revivalism) also dovetailed conveniently with the tenets of the rising Turkish nationalism, which, albeit artificially, drew a distinction between civilization and culture. The nationalists deemed civilization to be a system of objectively formulated universal truths and rules pertaining to practical matters that could be borrowed from the West, but defined culture as a subjective system of beliefs and mores that had to be jealously guarded as the core of a distinctively Turko-Islamic identity. Despite its dubious grounding, the analogy was extended into architecture, where new construction technologies and building types were imported as products of Western civilization, whereas the formal repertoire of Ottoman architecture was retained as a vestige of the national culture. Eventually, when the protonationalist Young Turks seized power in 1908, their ambitious initiative to construct administrative and institutional buildings throughout the empire effectively converted Ottoman Revivalism into the official architecture and, more important, replaced its imperial associations with nationalist ones.
After the proclamation of the republic (1923), which marked Turkey’s transition to nation-statehood, their credentials as the creators of the nationalist architecture helped Kemal and Vedat Bey and their cohorts secure important commissions for some of the first official buildings of the country’s new capital, Ankara. Kemalettin Bey’s Gazi School of Education (1926–30) and Vakif Apartments (1928); Vedat Bey’s Parliament Building (1926) and the Ankara Palas Hotel (1924–27); Arif Hikmet’s (Koyunoglu) Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1927), Turkish Hearths (1927–30), and Museum of Ethnography (1927–30); and Giulio Mongeri’s Agriculture Bank (1926–29) and Labor Bank (1928) stand among the most prominent buildings of the new republic’s early years.
Mid-1920s to Late 1940s
Beyond introducing a new political entity, by founding a new republic, Turkey’s leaders tried to inaugurate a modern national identity for the country and its people through extensive legal, institutional, and administrative reforms. During this formative period, Turkey’s collaboration with longtime ally Germany brought German experts and capital, shaping the principles and direction of the modernization process. Turkey’s leaders regarded architecture and urbanism as crucial instruments for rendering their reforms tangible. Thus, building a new capital in Ankara, for which they commissioned a plan from Hermann Jansen (1928–32), was one of their most ambitious undertakings. As the first plan introducing modern planning principles—such as land use zoning and a greenbelt system—on the scale of an entire city, Jansen’s plan was regarded as a model for the subsequent development of all Turkish cities.
In architecture, incoming foreign professionals sidelined their Turkish counterparts in obtaining government commissions, as the omission of historicist references in their projects favored them to Turkey’s leaders, who by then had moved away from a particularist nationalism with strong Turko-Islamic associations toward a universalist position, seeking to integrate Turkey with Europe. In actuality, the stripped-down Central European Neoclassicism of Theodor Post’s Ministry of Health, Ankara (1926–27) or Clemens Holzmeister’s ministerial buildings (1929–36) in the new government quarter, to name a few, shared the same Beaux-Arts-inspired compositional principles with nationalist architecture. However, it was more appealing to Turkey’s leaders because its restrained unornamented appearance imparted a desirable sense of stately dignity and also because it was less labor intensive and required cheaper materials.
As evidenced by the recruitment of artists, architects, and intellectuals fleeing Nazi persecution alongside those with ties to the German government, the Turkish government was interested more in the expertise and skills of its foreign specialists than in their political associations. Although they rarely found a platform for expressing their political views, émigré architects injected a different strain of modernist sensibilities into Turkey’s professional and intellectual discourses both through their involvement in the massive overhaul of higher education and through projects that displayed the trademark traits of German modernism, such as broken masses, interlocking volumes, open plans, and a move away from symmetry and axiality. Bruno Taut’s Faculty of Language, History, and Geography (1937) and Trabzon High School (1937–38) and Martin Elsaesser’s Sumerbank Headquarters (1937) figure among the prominent examples of the work of German émigrés in Turkey. Moreover, Martin Wagner’s consultancy for the Istanbul Municipality and Ernst Reuter’s tenure in the School of Political Science in Ankara served as a foundation for modern town- planning education in Turkey.
Meanwhile, local architects denounced their exclusion from most major government projects in Arkitekt, the first Turkish-language professional journal, which provided information about the latest trends and debates in the profession. Arkitekt also promoted the work of Turkish architects, who, as evidenced by Sekip Akalin’s Ankara Railroad Terminal (1937), Seyfi Arkan’s Palace of Exhibitions (1933), and Harbi Holtan’s Istanbul University Observatory (1936), were experimenting with both modernist and neoclassical repertoires. In the late 1930s, Sedad Hakki Eldem, one of the most prolific Turkish architects of the century, spearheaded the Second Nationalist movement, calling for a return to national precedents for inspiration. However, as in the examples of Atatürk’s Mausoleum (1942–53, by Emin Onat and Orhan Arda) and the Colleges of Sciences of the Istanbul (1944) and Ankara (1945) universities (by S.H. Eldem and Emin Onat), rather than introducing new spatial ideas, the second wave of nationalists retained their connection to the Beaux-Arts tradition, adhering to the organizational principles of the Central European Neoclassicism of Clemens Holzmeister and Paul Bonatz. Their references to local traditions took the form of stylized Ottoman decorative elements with a heightened awareness of precedents in civic and domestic architecture in the articulation of masses and plans.
More ubiquitous although less studied in this period are the numerous urban plans and institutional structures (schools, railroad stations, and community centers) that constituted the recurring and recognizable elements of a standardized national landscape. Designed and built by central state agencies, these structures were integral to the nation-building and modernization strategies. Among others, Turkey’s first female architects, Leman Tomsu and Munewer Belen, built their careers on these commissions.
Late 1940s to Mid-1980s
In the aftermath of World War II, the onset of the Cold War and the polarization of the international arena into rival blocs brought Turkey closer to the United States politically, economically, and culturally. American experts, capital, and models of modernization replaced those of Germany. The single-party rule ended in 1950, and more liberal economic policies were gradually adopted.
Significant changes also occurred in the architectural profession and education. With more architects graduating and venturing into private practice, the Chamber of Architects was formed in 1950 to protect the interests of the profession and to promote fair practices, especially in government commissions. In 1956, the Middle East Technical University Faculty of Architecture was opened in Ankara, adding American models of professional education to French and German models adopted earlier by the two schools in Istanbul.
During this period, the state continued to be the primary source of projects and jobs, but a growing clientele of private entrepreneurs also began to commission projects, such as factories, hotels, and office buildings. Nevzat Erol’s Istanbul City Hall (1953); Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s Istanbul Hilton Hotel (1952, with S.H. Eldem); Bozkurt, Bolak, and Beken’s Ulus Business Complex (1954); and Behruz and Altug Cinici’s Middle East Technical University campus (starting in 1955) stand out as early examples of the expanding repertoire of architectural practice. The diversification of projects, the increasing numbers of architects, and changes in education multiplied the stylistic, theoretical, and ethical discourses, especially after the 1960s. The various strains of postwar internationalism with which Turkish architects experimented may be observed in Günay Cilingiroglu’s Istanbul Reklam (1969) and Tercuman Press Facilities (1974), Sevki Vanli’s M.S.-B. Dormitories (1967–68), Sisa and Tekeli’s Lassa Tire Factory (1975–77), and Sargin an Böke’s Is Bank Headquarters. Meanwhile, as early as 1962, architects and scholars began to debate questions of contextualism and cultural heritage. Eldem’s Zeyrek Social Security Complex (1963–70), Turgut Cansever’s Turkish Historical Society (1966), and Cengiz Bektas’s Turkish Language Society (1972–78) are examples of projects addressing issues of heritage, context, and regional character. In the 1960s, population increase and waves of internal migration resulted not only in the densification of major metropolitan areas, with speculative apartment buildings emerging as the dominant type of urban housing, but also in the growth of squatter settlements around them. Although the academic and professional discourse became highly politicized in response to these problems, little could be implemented to resolve them.
1980s to the Present
Starting in 1980, the introduction of liberal economic measures, designed to integrate Turkey into the globalization process, followed by a military coup that facilitated their implementation, triggered profound changes in society, culture, and politics and widened the gap between the rich and the poor.
The state’s role in initiating new projects diminished, but with their newfound autonomy, local governments organized competitions for various projects, such as Davran Eskinat’s Ankara Bus Terminal (1995) and Hasan Ozbay and Tamer Basburg’s Gaziantep City Hall (1987), among others. Meanwhile, the private sector clearly became the major source of commissions. International partnerships and the influx of foreign capital transformed existing patterns of work and consumption. Like their contemporary counterparts that were mushrooming around the world, the new building types, which were designed to accommodate emerging uses, were not particularly distinctive by design, yet they stood as a remarkable novelty within the Turkish landscape. Exclusive resort hotels, such as the Sheraton Voyager (1990, by S.Basatemür) and Falez (1990, by Y. and S.Erdemir and S.Akkaya) in Antalya, and holiday villages, such as Pamfilya (by Tuncay Çavdar), burgeoned in coastal regions. Luxury corporate hotels (the Sheraton and Hilton in Ankara and the Swissotel, and Conrad Istanbul), business centers (Dogan Media Center by Aydin Boysan and Hayati and Murat Tabanlioglu and Sabanci Center by Haluk Tümay and Ayhan Böke), and downtown shopping centers (Akmerkez by Han Karabey and Atakule by Ragip Buluç) were built in major cities, which at the same time were challenged by rampant unemployment and massive internal migration. Although squatter settlements encircled many a Turkish metropolis, large housing developments accelerated suburbanization. Such developments include both upscale (MESA Korusitesi and Elvankent) and medium-range (Eryaman and Batikent) ones, gated communities (Mercansaray Evleri and Kemer Country), malls (Galleria Ataköy, 1989, by Hayati Tabanlioglu and Capitol Shopping Center, 1990–93, by Adnan Kazmaoglu and Murat Çilingiroglu), and megastores catering primarily to the upper-middle and upper classes.
In the 1990s, the conversion of Çiragan Palace and Sultanahmet Prison into luxury hotels, the gradual gentrification of older urban neighborhoods, and the random formalist replication of traditional motifs in new buildings, as well as a growing interest in miscellaneous traditional artifacts, indicated the increasing commodification of “heritage” in Turkey. As exemplified by the eclectic remix of historical precedents in Kemer Country designed by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany, local tradition had become one among many choices available to a select segment of Turkish society with access to the benefits of globalization. Given the relative scarcity of debate about the displacement of meanings in these examples and the rather indiscriminate importation of global trends, such approaches to historical context can hardly be considered critical or regionalist.
ZEYNEP KEZER
Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.3 (P-Z). Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005. |
