SPACES OF AN ESCAPIST UTOPIA:AN INQUIRY INTO THE YEŞİL YURT DREAM OF SERVET-I FÜNUN


Thesis Type: Postgraduate

Institution Of The Thesis: Middle East Technical University, Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Turkey

Approval Date: 2020

Thesis Language: English

Student: GÖNENÇ KURPINAR

Supervisor: Mustafa Haluk Zelef

Abstract:

Throughout the history, humankind has created many utopias and has used the utopian vision to build the physical environment, govern the social life or just escape from the existing reality. In order to elaborate discussions on utopias, this thesis is focused on Yeşil Yurt which was created in the late 19th century by literary and architectural tools that later turned into a single realized building. Discussing Yeşil Yurt’s interaction with architecture, literary spaces and utopianism, various architects’, sociologists', political scientists’, writers’ and philosophers’ thoughts and their utopian creations are analysed and then synthesized to create a framework. This framework will enable Yeşil Yurt, which is mainly a utopia of escape within the literary space of the Turkish intellectuals, to be studied in the general scope of utopianism and architecture.