Cinema can be assumed as a logbook of social status and changes. Also it’s a reflector of social life, development in terms of modernization and urban life practices. Movies transfers values, role models, cases and chances which are occuring in time through the stories. In a way, when they are combined with the spaces that we called as movie theaters they became a concrete memory text in their existing environment. These places can be perceived as a compenent which allows us to read time, space, place, modernity and development notions in their context.
Cinema halls have been the places of cultural activity visited by Turkish audiences for a long period. Watching movies in the cinema hall has it’s own atmosphere and different culture that it constituted. The audience must go to cinema to watch movie, so people started to go outside. This has changed the situation and take the life out to the street level. It seems like an ordinary act in today’s dynamics but in 1900’s it was seen as a special activity, social interaction tool and even an event that people take care about their dressings before they participate. Also, cinema halls was the places that removes bottom-top separation and moreover the hiding places that allow people to detach themselves from society and troubles of outside world during the movie time. In these halls, according to it’s period; singers performed at some special nights or movies made their premiere. These above turned the cinema halls into the pioneer places of entertainment which contains various event/activities inside it.
Cities are living organisms that are being formed up over time. They develop some unique schematics in tandem with the layout of the elements that they contain, formation of spaces and the routines which consist from daily life practices. Moreover, cities in the recent world, are constructing the characteristics of modernity/postmodernity, being one of the elements of central form of globalization. Especially in large metropolises –like Istanbul-, global and local axis and the tension between these dominant features form the main spine of the power relations that are shaped. They create a multi-dimensional network of relationships, in urban life where we experience things in economic, political and cultural sense in which they are spreaded and reproduced again and gain. (Aytaç, 2017) In this article, urban spatial standardization and stereotypification will be argued and criticised within the context of spatial memory, public sphere and urban transformation as mainly focusing on squares and public spaces.
İnsanın mekan üzerine fikir yürütme girişimleri Antik Yunan’dan günümüze kadar uzanmaktadır. Felsefenin de gündemini oluşturan elemanlardan biri olan ‘mekan’ kavramının üzerine yapılan ilk tartışmalar soyut/somut, doluluk/boşluk, görülebilen/görülemeyen, algılanan/algılanmayan gibi karşılaştırmalar çevçevesinde gerçekleştiriliyordu. İnsan, bir nesne yahut özne olarak varsayılıp yani etken veya edilgen olarak konumlandırılıp mekan bu minvalde eğreti bir perspektifle değerlendiriliyordu ve bahsedilen konular üzerine kısır ürünler çıkmasının sebebi denkleme dahil edilmeyen değişkenlerin noksanlığının bizi nitelikli bir sonuçtan uzaklaştırmasıydı. Aslında kente, mekana, topluma dair düşüncelerin filizlenmesi kuramsal ortamda farklı düşüncelerin, ideolojilerin ve keza sanayileşme sonrası kapitalizmin güdümüyle olmuştur. Fikirler ortamındaki soyut savaş ortamı düşünce dünyamızda yeni muharebe alanlarının açılmasına ve bunların kısa bir zaman içerisinde büyük bir hızla gelişmesine yol açmıştır. Bu yönüyle Marx’ın yaklaşımı zaman içersinde çok yönlü çürütülmüş olmasına rağmen mekansal sınıflaşma tartışmalarını başlatması sebebiyle önemlidir. Temel kuramları ve kuramcıları açıklamak çok uzun süreceği için Lefebvre, Castells, Harvey gibi isimlerin söylediklerine önceden göz atmak gerekli.
Mekan durağan değil dinamik bir olgudur. Hem kuşatır, hem de kuşatılır. Hem müdahale eder hem de maruz kalır yani etkiler ve aynı zamanda etkilenir.
Stations, very first places that we encounter with a new city, in which we feel the sense of curiosity, wondering or astonishment to this strange habitat, or places that greets us at the first sight. Railway stations are significant urban thresholds and interconnection points for transportation. Especially after industrialization, they became important on spatial ground and also on urban scale architectural production. Before lead in the subject, to make a definition; these places can be identified as permanent structures which host temporary guests on it’s special environment, a spatial composition containing intense circulation. Until last five/ten years, Old Sirkeci Station was one of the buildings that leave mark on our urban spatial domain but nowadays it started to lose it’s special identity.
( Sirkeci Station – South Facade, Main Entrance )
Sirkeci Station was designed by German architect August Jachmund with neo-baroque style that is related with european orientalism. Construction of the terminal structure was completed in 1890. The idea was to design this building to behave like a gate for both inner and outer arrivals/departures and as a representation of orient culture in which İstanbul situated on the very edge of it. General spatial organization and architectural approach can be easily observed on the main facade of the building. According to a functionalist perspective, building complex responds to the basic and subsidiary needs for passengers. Main station building consists from one big rectangular structure which is divided to two wings by monumental main hall. It was the main entrance in past but today entrance is shifted to building’s longitudinal west side and secondary waiting hall. Administration office, ticket offices, restaurant, waiting zones are situated in these two wings. Recently, Sirkeci Station is inactive but the building is serving as a passage and a breathing space for the people who are passing through the Old Sirkeci Station to Marmaray Metro Line.
(Sirkeci Station – Concourses)
Historical buildings like Sirkeci Station are not only significant for their historical value but also for their symbolic meanings that they acquire in time by being a subject in people’s lifes in long while. In specific to Sirkeci, first, it became a symbol for Orient Express and in it’s early times it was reflecting the economical and technological situation of the Ottoman Empire, later on, in 1950s Sirkeci Station was involved in movies as a matter of space for labor migration to European countries. In several movies and tv series, the station was associated with a new beginning, or a starting point for people who are arriving from or departing to Europe rather Haydarpaşa Station was highly involved in İstanbul-Anatolia relationship. Moreover, because of it’s slighly monumental but not mighty, horizontal design, station building was much more intertwined with ground level and more important with the citizens. Ironically, when you’re walking on the conourses of Old Sirkeci Station, you feel desolated from your recent reality because people are rushing from opposite side which is a part of a later addition to the building. Furthermore, due to it’s highly eclecticized architectural texture –horseshoe arch, rose window, different ornaments, mansard dome, etc.- it is hard to examine the dominant pattern on building context. When reading or evaluating a space/place it is necessary to analyze various variables such as user experience, historical development and changes, architectural characteristics and spatial layout. In natural language, it is the meaning and grammatical rules that provide links between words. Likely, in form language, forms establish links between forms.(Alexander, 1979) In conclusion, as a result of these links, subjects are formed by the convergence of the words and on the ground of forms, buildings, paths and spaces are exist as a result. In terms of urban experience, people read the environment that they live and experience in every day and they develop a culture of it over time. The memories, as the traces of previous events are kept in memory, which establish relationships between past and today through individuals and city, by exposing the images of one’s personal experiences. In fact, the most important feature of Sirkeci Station is the presence of spatial recognition over people’s minds.
(Sirkeci Station – Waiting Zone)
General opinion is to think the buildings as concrete, non-living objects but indeed, they are living organisms that corresponds to the human-environmental activities on their surrounding and inside themselves. That respond to external impacts might either be an adaptation or decadency. Also, about stations, Henrik Reeh mentiones that: “A main station is an urban microcosm that allows travellers to feel the presence of many milieux of the city. Fellow travellers, railroad employees, shopkeepers, masses of employees commuting from the suburbs, as well as the subterranean world of crime and social exclusion, all mingle in one single space. Displaying both movement and inertia, the main station presents in condensed form the life of the city in which you are about to arrive.” Even so, they are not just functional spaces of mass structure but a hybrid platform that embraces social and cultural flow through crowds. Hosting the agglomeration of memories, activities and temporary life circles. All of these entities are leaving a mark on building and it’s collective memory, both affecting/constituting it’s environmental atmosphere over time. While wandering over main hall, you can taste an instant moment of past time in a particular space. This may be triggered by a smell, an illumination, a reflection, a breeze blowing through crack, sound of old door and else. The production of imaginative space of multiple times through senses. As Pallasmaa indicated in his The Eyes of the Skin, architectural experience has interrelationship with our physical and mental reception. Our perception is can also be altered upon the motion of the building, sum of the movements, lights, sensations that we get, condition, memories and else. All are gathered and filtered in our minds and taken into a cognitional process to create an identification of a specific moment.
References:
Alexander, C. (1977) A Pattern Language
Pallasmaa, J. (2005) The Eyes of the Skin
Postalcı, E. (2006). The New Urban Memory
Redwood, R. (2008) Collective Memory and the Politics of Urban space: an introduction
Reeh H. (2009) Arrivals and Departures: Travelling to the Airports of Berlin. In: Staiger U., Steiner H., Webber A. (eds) Memory Culture and the Contemporary City.
9. yüzyılın en büyük takıntısı tarihti. İçinde bulunduğumuz dönem, belki de, daha çok mekan dönemidir (M. Foucault)
Mekanın toplumsal inşasını anlamak, kendimizi kurma biçimlerimizi anlamak demektir (Irvin C. Shick)
Her toplumun mekan tahayyülünde ve mekansal davranışında büyük farklılıklar vardır. Bu da toplumların kültürel farklılıklarından kaynaklanmaktadır. Zaman içinde her kültür sistemi, yaşama biçimini, mekan anlayışı ve onu kullanışıyla yansıtmıştır. (I. Altan)
Mevzubahis ‘mimarlık’ ve ‘edebiyat’ gibi ucu açık, disiplinlerarası kolektivitenin yoğun olduğu alanlar olunca hem kesilebilecek ahkamın kuvveti, hem de bunun beraberinde getirdiği -altını doldurma zorunluluğundan mütevellit- muazzam omuz yükü artıyor.
Düşlüyor, kurguluyor, organize ediyor ve bu hayal mahsüllerini, kendimizle yaptığımız fikir teatilerini; bazen bir planın köşesinde, kendi ekseninde parlayan ufak bir ayrıntı, bazen kurduğumuz alçak tondan cümlenin en oturaklı, en ses getiren elemanı olarak biçimlendiriyoruz.
Sözün bittiği yerde somut bir haykırıştır mimarlık, gücünü yoğrulmuş düşüncelerden alan.
Kararlarımız ve buna bağlı kabullerimiz de büyük rol oynuyor kurgumuzu tasarlama süreci içerisinde. Aslında; ‘Edebiyat’ ve ‘Mimarlık’ mefhumlarının -görece- en keskin yol ayrımı da tam da bu noktada peyda oluyor. İroniktir ki ayrımlar, en kuvvetli kesişim noktalarında bulunurlar. Kurgu ve bu kavramın getirisi olan sonsuz ihtimaller evreninde mimarlık, dinamiklerinden kaynaklı, edebiyata göre nispeten daha kesin ve rasyonel sonuçlara ulaşma eğilimindedir. Edebiyat ihtimaller açısından ‘ebedi tamahkarlık’ lüksüne sahipken; mimarlık kendi hikayesine distopik öğeleri dahil etmemek için önlemler almak zorundadır. Birinde oluyor ve bitiyordur; diğerinde ise gerçekleşmiş ve etkilenerek süregeliyordur. Bir cephede olacaklar külliyen yazarın kontrolünde iken, diğer cepede ise bireylerin yahut toplulukların müşterek kullanımlarından dolayı ortada bir ‘dolaylı kendiliğindenlik’, yer, zaman ve mekana göre şekillenme, yeni bir forma evrilme hali hakimdir.
Edebiyat yapıyı cümleleriyle kurarken, mimarlık bunu çizgileri ve muhtelif somut öğeleriyle yapar.
İçinde bulunduğumuz ortamla daima etkileşim halindeyiz. Farklı disiplinlerden besleniyor ve fikir dünyamıza kattığımız yeni bilgilerin ışığında ürünler veriyoruz. “Kalıcı olmak” gayesiyle dünyamızda çeşitli kurgularımız, ütopyalarımız hasıl oluyor. Bunların doğal bir sonucu olarak “distopik” öğelere evrilen bir yığın düşünce/fikir var. Bizim için “son”lar her zaman belirlenebilir nitelikte değil, kaçınılmaz olanlarıyla karşılaşmak gibi imtina ettiklerimizin de olduğu aşikar. Küçük kurgularımıza: pervasızca, gelişigüzel sonlar biçebilirken; üzerinde daha etraflıca düşünülmüş layıhalarımız konusunda bu derece savurgan olamıyoruz. Temennilere fırsat vermeden, gerçeği belirtircesine ve ekseriyetle ucu açık bir biçimde sonuç önerileri sunuyoruz. Düşüncelerimizin en yoğun olduğu anlarda, betimlemelerimiz peyderpey koyulaşırken masaya birdenbire kesin yargılar sürüveririz. Bu bizim, ortadaki muallaklık durumunu sona erdirme arayışımızdan ileri gelir.
İşin özü;
Mimarlık ve Edebiyat birbiriyle daima etkileşim halinde olmuştur. Kurgu, bu iki kavramın birbiriyle kesiştiği noktada yoluna aktarma yaparak devam eder. Biz bu oyunun hem oyuncusu, hem de yazarı olarak rol alırız. Hayal dünyamız ve olaylara bakış açımızın bizi yönlendirdiği kadarıyla…
