Research Information System
Thesis Type: Postgraduate
Institution Of The Thesis: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Faculty of Architecture, Department of Architecture, Turkey
Approval Date: 2017
Student: DUYGU HAZAL SİMSER
Supervisor: İNCİ BASA
Abstract:The term heterotopia, which has come to be known with the conceptualization of French social philosopher Michel Foucault, provides a new way in understanding the space by shaking the accustomed boundaries of our thought. Foucault accentuates space as the concern of today’s anxiety and identifies it as the form of relations between emplacements. In this conception, heterotopias appear as real arrangements that have uncanny and contradictory juxtapositions. However, the ambiguous nature of the concept eases its expansion across a range of disciplines which in turn obstructs its control as a clear-cut tool in analysing the space. Hence, a delicate scrutiny of heterotopia rises as a necessity to reveal essential peculiarities of these other spaces. This study claims that the concept of heterotopia can be used as a proper tool of analysis in understanding peripheral urban consuming sites that have been developing aftermath of neo-capitalist economic policies. In that sense, the study adopts a twofold inquiry. The concept of heterotopia first appears as the object of analysis. After a thorough clarification of its base lines, the principles of heterotopology, which is the systematic descriptions of heterotopias, are deployed in examining the characteristics of retail built environments that are emplaced at the peripheries of the cities.