İnşanın Poetikasından Poetikanın İnşasına: Meclis Cami Üzerinden Mekanda Poetikliğin İzini Sürmek

Abstract

Tracing The Poetics of Space Through Mosque Of The Turkish Grand National Assembly, Master Thesis, Ankara, 2017.

Space is both material and spiritual entity. In addition to the formal expression of space, there is also a sensible space. By modernism, one can underline a dramatic change in the understanding of the term space. The main reason behind this change is our relation with the world. By modernism being with the world becomes being in the world, and experiencing the world becomes experimenting the world. In that respect the spiritual and sensible aspect of space was ignored and undervalued. With the effect of consumption culture, the space started to be understood as a mere image or as an object of consumption, That kind of objective space, that is calculable and metric serves only to the eye (or the gaze) and the subjective and narrative values related with this space get lost. In short the space loses its deepest touch with the human and its phenomenological dimension was disappeared. In that context, one can ask: is it possible to bridge the gap that modernism create between the objective and subjective aspects of space? Did we lose our entire connection with the poetic space? In light of these questions, first chapter of the thesis is about the aim, scope and structure of the problem. The second chapter introduces the dramatic change that we experience by modernity. While doing that the chapter try to bring a closer look about how objectification, rationalization and universalization changed our conception of space and how it took space away from its phenomenological aspect. At the end of this chapter, one can recognize a map about the concepts that are related with modernity and space. Third chapter, by introducing Martin Heidegger, M. Merleau-Ponty, C. Norberg-Schulz and Juhani Pallasmaa's theories tries to bring an alternative understanding of space. Their line of thought creates a contrast with the modernist conception of space and one can find a fertile soil to argue the phenomenological dimension of space. Although these theorists differ from each other in certain aspect, the poetics of space can be taken as a key concept they all share. Fourth chapter structures itself around the concept of „poetics of space‟. And, by bringing Gaston Bachelard‟ well-known book Poetics of Space in to the argument, the thesis tries to redefine the term. All these theoretical arguments about the construction of poetics and poetics of construction will try to be materialized in the last chapter of the thesis. By bringing a close look to the mosque of the Parliament House in Ankara, that was designed by well-known Turkish architect Behruz Çinici, the thesis tries to show the non-objective values of space.

Keyword Space, Poetics, Phenomenology, Spatial experience