Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
The Republic, Architecture and the City: The Legacy of 100 Years, İstanbul, Türkiye, 12 - 13 Ekim 2023, ss.84-101
Railway connections to the cities change the direction of urban development toward the dense cultural and commercial infrastructure. In Konya, railway construction in 1896 altered the cultural dynamics and diversity, fostering cross-regional connections with the effect on culture and economics on the surrounding built environment. The alignment of such a transportation axis created a linear cut in the city and became an urban backbone that sprawls and creates alternative patterns, opening the micro-stigmatized cultural infrastructures. This study investigates the Republican Ideology-Based Transportation Axis's role in the rapid cultural development of Istasyon Street in Konya. The axis is the cultural operator that can be discussed by creating a frequency with the longest-range networks in its historicity. The axis has different cultural positions in the pre-Republic period, the Republic period (1923-1950), the period after mid-century modernism (1950- 2010), and high-speed train construction (after 2010) through being a core campus of transportation with national and international styles that operates diversity of other networks by creating nodes. Since new productions of cultural spaces caused the fragmentary and heterogeneous formation of the spatial hegemony of the axis, the study uses the Cultural Mapping Methodology to analyze the intricate relationship between railway development and the emergence of cultural infrastructures. Also, the study visualizes and articulates different perspectives on how different cultural ideologies are situated in the urban ground. Key cultural spaces, including Anıt Square, Gezi Square, educational institutions, Millet Bahçesi, Theater Building, Atatürk Stadium, DSI, and Tantavi depot, are explored to illustrate how the railway's presence shaped the creation of public gathering spaces, educational centers, and recreational facilities. These cultural nodes served not only utilitarian purposes but also became symbolic representations of collective memory, reflecting the city's cultural and architectural evolution in history, witnessing the last period of the Ottoman Empire, the first years of the Turkish Republic with the nationalist ideals and an architectural style adapted to the contemporary ages. The study highlights the adaptive reuse of existing structures within the station's vicinity to preserve architectural heritage with collective culture and identity products of the past while accommodating contemporary cultural and economic needs. Situated spaces on the axis fulfill practical requirements while embodying cultural narratives, historical layers, and urban memories, which have been reproduced until today. However, the modifications until now do not directly mirror broader shifts in urban planning, architectural aesthetics, and cultural aspirations of the modernization ideals between the 1920s-1950s. Below the surface axis is subordinated with eclectic cultural adaptation processes, economic growth, and corridor-centered urban transformation triggered by Republican endeavors. The study maps the continuous traces of cultural infrastructures that are culturally sustained and have spontaneous symbolizations of socio-cultural legacies during the one-hundred-year-old history of the Republic.
Keywords: Railway, Cultural mapping, Station street, Republican heritage, Cultural
infrastructure