The Voice of the Place: What Ulus Business Centre has to Say
In the present time, the architectural heritage of the Republican era in particular is being rapidly destroyed. In the Virtual Museum of Architecture’s new exhibition the case of the Ulus Business Centre, which is under threat in the scope of the Ankara municipality’s ‘Ankara Historical City Centre Renovation Area Project’ plan, draws attention to interventions desired in our cities in the name of improvement, renovation and transformation.
The exhibition conveys the results of a research project run by Ali Cengizkan and Didem Kılıçkıran carried out by 18 M.S students from the Architecture Department M.S. studios of the METU Faculty of Architecture in the scope of Arch 713. Focusing on the concept of ‘place’, the research based on oral history, archive scanning and ethnographic methods focuses on the concept of ‘space’ is an attempt to establish what kind of ‘space’ the Ulus Business Centre, an important example of modern architecture in Turkey, has evolved into since its construction in the 1950s. The importance of the Business Centre as ‘an urban memory and an identity element’ is stressed in the research conducted through conversations with citizens and Business Centre tradesmen, taking as a starting point questions like ‘What personal experiences, daily routines, whose memories and what ceremonies has the Ulus Business Centre hosted?’ and ‘Will a design in whatever form that replaces the business centre be able to carry on its hosting function?’ Also in the research the architecture of the building and its urban and spatial values are determined using talks with architects and historians and urban space analysis methods by means of the project being carried out on the site. The exhibition, which fully conveys the conceptual and methodological richness of the research, uses its startling findings to show the importance of understanding what kind of a ‘place’ the Business Centre is before generating ideas regarding its future, and the importance of listening to the voice of the ‘place’, as is conveyed in the title of the exhibition. It provides clues as to the scientific studies that should be carried out prior to comprehensive urban interventions.
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The Voice of the Place: What Ulus Ishani Has To Say
In Ankara’s centre, Ulus, we are faced with a very different threat. The new construction enterprise that has been pioneered by Ankara Municipality for a period of more than three years stems from the region being established as a ‘depressed area’. Proclaiming the site as an Urban Transformation region, preparations...
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Public Space / Public Building
If for individuals an important denominator of being ‘a town-dweller’ is sharing and experiencing the city with other townsfolk, being aware of other citizens and feeling a part of the whole, an important denominator in buildings being able to become ‘town-dwellers’ is ‘providing possibilities’ for this sharing, exp...
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The Owners
A shopkeeper who has been a tenant in İşhanı from the year it opened to the present and who has witnessed the changes of the place over the last 45 years should be evaluated as an owner of the 'place' because of the strong relationship formed with the building. The in-depth conversations with shopkeepers were one of...
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The Values
In this section of the project the aim was to get the views of architects and historians of architecture on Ulus İşhanı. Conversations were held on the dates below from December 2006 to February 2007 about the architecture of the building and the urban space values, symbolism of the historical city centre, internati...
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