Architects Take Command : the LCC Architect's Department

2016

Urban History, 2008

in Proceedings 4th International Conference of the IFOU: The New Urban Question - Urbanism beyond Neo-Liberalism, Delft, 26-28.10.2009., 2009

Cities gain new functions today, as being the crucial points within the global capital circulation network, in relation with the multi-layered processes of globalization. While the top tier of cities is defined, the second or third tiers are less clearly articulated. Because of this, cities compete to establish and stabilize their position in these networks of global capital fluidity within their regions. So, as cities became more competitive in global networks, their priorities shift. Special object of study of the paper is Istanbul, which is the biggest metropolis of Turkey and nowadays which has been in this contest of becoming the leader city within its region and engaging with global networks. And today, within this globally driven conjuncture, the city encounters with a new ruling factor: The Package. The Package is the programmatic and formal content of new emerging areas of working, housing, commerce, entertainment, and circulation and, it also defines the relational networks between them. Principally it consist of the juxtapositions of "shopping center + business center + protected residential zone + highway/subway" in various compositions. The development area of The Package is mostly the new emerging axles on the edges of metropolis. Its impact on the center is mainly in the form of splashes. The Package works for the tendency of the new global economic, political and cultural supremacy towards enclosing all aspects of our lives, with giving it its living form. It insists on a certain kind of planning and marketing strategy. Within this process, architecture can serve for it and the thought or conception of planning (as we know it; a concept of planning considering public wealth), is almost unfunctional.

Cahiers de la recherche architecturale, urbaine et paysagère, 2019

The theory of architecture seems, in some respects, like a discursive field located outside of time. As Jean-Pierre Chupin reminds us: Following the example of most scientific revolutions, transformations in architectural theory are most often "destructive" to previous paradigms. It is often the case that the virtues of an idea or a principle are only rediscovered after several generations. Architects, however, do not hesitate to redefine them inside or outside of history 1. The Legacy of Architectural and Urban Planning Theories : Works in progress Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère, 4 | 2019 The Legacy of Architectural and Urban Planning Theories : Works in progress Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère, 4 | 2019

2021

The paper analyses architects as a professional group in General Government (GG) during the Second World War. It showcases some of their design work, projects, employment, education, and other aspects of everyday life in an occupied country. The focus is on architects working in three cities: the former Polish capital of Warsaw, the GG's new capital city of Cracow, and Zakopane, localized in the Tatra Mountains, which was intended to become a modern resort and sport center. The paper also mentions cases from Zamość and Radom. Most of the projects were realized by Polish architects employed by the German authorities. In Zakopane, Polish architects had a stronger position and more freedom in their work than in the other cities of GG. The article investigates the relationships between architecture and politics as well as the ideological impact of the architects' work. Using unpublished archival sources, it evaluates the post-war requitals of the German architect Hubert Groß and...

Architecture in Development: Systems and the Emergence of the Global South, 2022

This essay examines a pervasive trait of planning and architecture from the mid -1960s onward: their tendency to cast their objectives in a mode of incompletion. The study focusses on two major planning exercises, initially celebrated but later widely recognized as failures, to elucidate the conditions driving incompletion: the Ford Foundation’s planning mission in Calcutta, India, and Candilis Josic Woods’ plan for the Le Mirail extension in Toulouse, France. The essay argues that this sensibility of incompletion essentially reflected a responsivity to radical shifts in global state-fiscal outlooks against a fraying Bretton Woods arrangement at the end of the 1960s.

Planning Perspectives, 2018

Planning history is now claiming its place as a sub-discipline in the social sciences concerned with modern urban living. The perspective is global and the research interdisciplinary. The Handbook of Planning History attempts to bring this work together in one place: as a reference and a guide, but also to inspire further research. The Routledge series aims to contribute to finding responses to the pressing challenges of mass global urbanization, the argument being there is an immediate need for sound, scientific research on urban issues, to understand them and to provide insight into current problems. Currently, the challenge for urban planning practitioners dealing with the future can seem overwhelming in the face of modern complexities. The editor of the Handbook, Carola Hein, suggests that a unifying starting point is the study of planning history, the many histories of experiences of urbanization in different cultures and periods that gives insight into specific, historically determined processes, yet also shared connections. She and her team have come up with a structure for this ambitious but very welcome initiative to study and connect. The Handbook has four sections: 'Writing Planning History: Agents, Theories, Methods and Typologies'; 'Time, Place and Culture: From Euro-American to Global Planning History'; 'Sites and Dynamics'; and the last section on 'Futures'. These headings are flexible enough to contain a great variety of subjects and approaches, while expanding established but limited narratives of planning history. The bias is towards a study of how planning, as a professional activity, has evolved in different economic, cultural and political contexts. The Editor is quite clear that this volume cannot be definitive: planning history itself is subject to many definitions. Rather it is a pioneering attempt to give the subject coherence. It is directed towards the encouragement of further research and especially to the recruitment of new young researchers who will take the subject further, ready for a second edition! This review will attempt to give a flavour of what is on offer but with 37 papers, comments will be necessarily limited. Part I does not dodge the question of 'what is planning history'. Carola Hein gives an overview, her underlying belief being that history is the 'glue' that binds the discipline together. She uses the very basic historical questions: what? why? and how?a skeleton of what planning history has been. It is for the others in this section to flesh this out further. Stephen Ward offers two papers: the first sticking closely to the what? why? how? format, outlining the origins of planning history in the UK and US, with a glance at Germany and France; his second, on the diffusion of planning expertise in the modern period across the world. Nancy Kwak's paper focuses on interdisciplinarity, a key feature of planning history. She asks some pertinent questions: about the subject, about process, power structures, timing, and unplanned spaces (planning from 'below'). She hints at the critical limitations of planning history itself, perhaps seeking to include the broader vision of global urban history. The next three papers are Andre Sorenson's offering of some theory to facilitate comparative work. He promotes a theory he names the 'Historical Institutional Approach', inspired by economic theories but adapted to planning history. Peter Batey's description of how planners in the past approached their workwith maps and plans but uncertain questions of how actually to proceedis a vital contribution, reminding readers of the most basic aspect of all planning: the physical challenge of how to build better places. Robert Freestone, critical of biographies in planning history, suggests at least, they reveal subjective understanding and offers a list of useful biographies. Robert Home addresses the challenge of global systems of planning, looking at power structures especially colonialism, post-colonialism, and others, offering a good starting point for studies of a complex world.

In recent decades, modernist planning has been subject to a series of damaging criticisms, some of which have substance. This chapter makes a qualified defence of modernist ideals against those critics who too easily make the planners the cause of the problems with which planning is called upon to deal. Those problems remain and require a revaluation of the planning process.

Neo-Lİberalism and the Architecture of the Post Professional Era, 2018

ARCHITECTURE BEYOND CONSTRUCTION The modes of existence in today’s post-industrial, globalized, neo liberalized world are subjected to a constant state of change. The ways in which we perceive the world, communicate, produce and consume are all transforming. Architecture, being one of the fields of many human practices that build up culture, is no exception. As the modern, centralized, national state of the industrialized society is superseded by the post-modern, decentralized, global state of the post-industrial society, it could be argued that the discipline of architecture is shifting from professionalism to a post-professional condition. As a profession based on the corporealization of power, the discipline of architecture has been in close relationship with dominating power structures throughout its history. Yet it has never been focused on mere image production and creating exchange value to the extent it is, in today’s neoliberal political climate. On one hand, the globalized economy is celebrating the construction industry as a highly profitable means for capital accumulation. In the last two decades, while some cities such as Dubai were built from scratch, becoming new global business centers; some industrial cities on the verge of recession, such as Bilbao were reinvented as artistic and cultural hubs by inserting iconic architectural pieces. In any case, architecture have become a tool for marketing cities in the global scene; leading to a simultaneous popularization of architecture and loss of disciplinary content. This chapter focuses on the current state of the architectural profession and the practicing architect as a spatial intellectual in the globalized world; reflecting on the possibility of an architectural practice beyond the constraints of the construction industry. This issue is handled through a threefold discussion. Firstly an account on the condition of normative / conventional urban space making practices at the age of neoliberal urban politics is given; through the “construction” practices going on in the last 20 years in the city of Istanbul. As the cultural and economic capital of a developing country, namely Turkey; İstanbul has been going under a tremendous amount of construction work during the 2000’s. This quantitative magnitude is the reason why Istanbul is chosen as the case of this part of the discussion. Secondly, a reflection upon the conventional architectural practices in the global city of the 21th century is presented in order to understand the current condition, capabilities and shortcomings of the normative profession. Thirdly, the possibility of generating an architectural practice beyond the constraints of construction industry, having the potential to produce alternative spatial practices that could engage with urgent social issues will be addressed through looking into a number of global cases. Lastly, concluding remarks underlining the necessity for an architectural practice beyond construction is given.

Neo-liberalism and the Architecture of the Post Professional Era

The last decade of urban space-making practices in Turkey has been dominated by a construction frenzy caused by the neoliberal alignment of capitalist market forces and urban governments. Not unlike the current global architectural scene, the effect of this situation toward professional architectural practice in Turkey is twofold: On the one hand, architecture and design in general are becoming booming professions as creative forces of the construction industry that forms the core of the national economy. The job opportunities and commissions for practicing architects are proliferating, and the clientele profile has been expanding with national-international investors as well as the central and local governments promoting large-scale urban development projects. On the other hand, the architectural practice is so immensely dominated by the neoliberal policies focused on "building as a means for economic growth" that there is virtually no room for a professional discourse encompassing disciplinary ethics charged with social agenda, informed by spatial intelligence, formulated with public participation, aiming for the greater good. This paper aims to discuss the current state of the architectural profession and the practicing architect as a spatial intellectual in the globalized world, focusing mainly on the İstanbul experience and reflecting on the possibility of an architectural practice beyond the constraints of the construction industry. In the course of the paper, firstly a brief account on the condition of normative/conventional urban space-making practices at the age of neoliberal urban politics is given through the example of İstanbul. Then, a reflection upon the capabilities and capacities of the architectural profession in terms of producing alternative spatial practices is delved upon. Lastly, concluding remarks underlining the necessity for an architectural practice beyond construction are introduced.