Housing the modern nation: The transformation of residential architecture in Ankara during the 1920s


Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mimarlık Fakültesi, Mimarlık Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2018

Öğrenci: DENİZ AVCI HOSANLI

Danışman: TOMRİS ELVAN ALTAN

Özet:

The dissertation examines the residential architecture produced in Ankara during the 1920s. Scholars have studied the traditional housing in the historic city of Ankara constructed from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, as well as the modern housing constructed in the newly developed parts of the city during the period from the 1930s onwards; however, studies on the housing production of the first decade of the Turkish Republic in both the old and the new parts of Ankara are still insufficient. The period of focus in this study starts from the turn of the decade of the 1920s, when Ankara became the seat of the national struggle and was then chosen as the capital city in 1923, and extends until the beginning of the 1930s when the period of more radical modernization started. The interventions of the new Republican regime during this period changed the daily lives of the inhabitants of the city, and transformed the housing production. From the location of houses in the city to their interior spaces, from the social character of their neighborhoods to their formal, technical, and spatial characteristics, the housing production of the 1920s' Ankara was determined by the contextual characteristics of the Republican state. Nevertheless, while adapting to the modernizing way of living, the past could not be easily dismissed or overcome. This dissertation documents and analyzes the houses and apartments in Ankara built during the 1920s with the aim to evaluate how an "eclectic" and/or "hybrid" residential architecture was formed in the capital city during the first decade of the Republic, reflecting and affecting the contemporary identity of the new state in Turkey that could be defined as in-between the "historical-traditional" and the "modern".