Domestic space, modernity, and identity: The apartment in mid-20th century Turkey.

摘要

How did the apartment, as a built form, as a setting for everyday domestic life, and as a concept, contribute to forming modern consciousness in Turkey? This dissertation examines the social, cultural, political, economic, and architectural aspects of urban apartments between the 1950 election, which marked the advent of a more democratic society, and the 1965 Flat Property Law, which allowed individual ownership of units within a building. It analyzes the apartment's role with respect to Turkish modernization and Westernization, delineating a picture of the collective notion of modernity in mid-20 th century.; The study engaged multiple methods, including a class-based socio-spatial analysis of plans, archival research, oral histories; and analyses of extant structures, material culture, advertisements, and literary works. I examined architect-built apartments with a focus on everyday spaces, mundane objects, such as toilet fixtures, and inhabitants' experiences; and subjected the major themes that emerged to discursive analysis. These themes were Turkish modernity, architectural Modernism, class, and gender.; My analysis of ordinary spaces, such as maids' rooms, balconies, and bathrooms, constitutes a rich and unexplored domain that exposed the continuation and modernization of hierarchical class relations; it also highlights women's gendered identity in domestic space. Most significantly, the analysis demonstrates that the urban apartment, as a physical embodiment of contemporary beliefs, social norms, and shared values, occupied the confluence of cultural modernity and architectural Modernism. The apartment as social space revealed the desire of inhabitants, architects, and interior designers for change that was informed by political and cultural ideals of the West, reconfigured by postwar geopolitics. Residents and designers conceptualized the apartment as the epitome of modernity. However, they simultaneously embraced cultural priorities in creating domestic space for a consumer society shaped by political dynamics. Concepts of modern architecture were blended with traditional ones. In that sense, apartment interiors embodied a liminal space in which a desire to belong to a universal civilization coexisted with resistance and a return to tradition. Inside the unadorned facades, architectural Modernism was overcome by Turkish modernity. The spatial composition of apartments and their material culture represented the plurality, complexity, and ambiguity of Modern architecture.