Architecture and Ideology

122
Dr SUAT ÇABUK, Associate Professor
Karabük Üniversity, suatcabuk@hotmail.com
MELTEM ÖZKAN ALTINÖZ, PhD student
Middle East Technical University, meltemozkan@gmail.com
SHIFTING IDEOLOGIES IN TIMES AND SPACES: A CASE
STUDY FROM KARABÜK, TURKEY
Abstract |
Karabük city was established in the north‐west Anatolia in 1937 as a result of iron‐steel
factories’ investment. The industrial setting would transform a small section of a village to an
affluent and self‐sufficient city in a few years. Rapidly, the city became a heart of the young
Turkish Republic which formulated iron‐steel industry as a demonstration of its technological
and economic advance. Not only are the factories formulated by Republican ideology, but also
its urban setting. The factory workers’ residence crisis was solved with a plan of “Yenisehir”
that was set up by the famous French architect‐city planner Henri Prost. The plan was
formulated with a hierarchical setting according to workers’ ranks. In addition, social
infrastructure mechanism was added to this urban formulation to create a prosperous living
environment. However, Yenisehir, which is the only, planned and early modern settlement of
Karabuk that has been urbanized unhealthily in time reached its population from 100 to
100.000. The area has been facing a destruction process in recent years with various reasons,
although houses were in a good condition and lived inside. On opposed to the reactions from
scientific and professional community these destructions could not be prevented.
In this paper, Karabük Yenisehir settlement’s spatial alteration will be analyzed. Notably, the
study will focus on shifting ideologies of the Turkish Republic where building and demolishing
processes perfectly expose changing social and political agenda of the Republic in different
time periods.
Key words |
Karabuk‐Yenisehir; Iron and Steel Factories; Spatial Transformation; Architecture; Urban
Planning; Ideology