Autonomy: Re-appreciation of architecture

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

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

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2004

Öğrenci: MELİS GÜRBÜZBALABAN

Danışman: AYŞEN SAVAŞ SARGIN

Özet:

The contradiction between architecture̕s أautonomyؤ, its existence as an entity with its own أdisciplinary specificityؤ- and its social أengagementؤ, its involvement in culture, ideology and economy, has been the subject of numerous discussions in architectural discourse, initially in Europe and later in North America. It is argued in this thesis that although أautonomyؤ and أengagementؤ seem contradictory to each other, architecture̕s أcritical statusؤ is rooted in this contradiction. Autonomy is regarded as one of the essential sides of architecture̕s dual position. This suggests that the in-between, or in Stanford Anderson̕s terms, أquasi-autonomousؤ status of architecture can only be sustained through its existence as an entity that has a certain degree of autonomy. Autonomy is an agent for architectural discourse to isolate architecture from its involvement in the external reality and increase awareness within the discipline by concentrating on its specific knowledge. Autonomy aids architecture to pretend to be أdetachedؤ while in reality it is أengagedؤ. To focus on the autonomous dimension of architecture, to search for architecture̕s own intrinsic qualities, helps to produce knowledge within the discipline and provides a أcritical distanceؤ for architecture to resist any أexternal authorityؤ. Thus this thesis intends to explore the potentials of the conceptualization and problematization of أautonomyؤ in architecture and its employment as a critical tool by architectural discourse to re-assess architectural practice. The private house projects designed by Boran Ekinci in Turkey are exemplified and utilized for the re-conceptualization of the term and enable the transfer of the discourse related with autonomy to the local context where the issue hardly gained a popularity. By doing so, both the appreciation of autonomy in general and reappreciation of