AWARDS

Eleventh Cycle of National Architecture Awards Winners Are Announced / Eds: N. Müge Cengizkan

Organized biannually by the Chamber of Architects of Turkey, the National Awards programme has announced the winner projects of 2008. 137 projects from 129 architects were submitted in 172 presentation panels to the evaluation of the jury this year. The jury members and chair of the jury, Atilla Yücel have chosen the award winning projects in each three categories; build works, projects and ideas presentation. Added to that Ziya Tanalı was announced as the winning architect of "Grand Award" (Sinan Prize). The Achievement Award in contribution to the field of architecture was given to Mimarlar Derneği 1927 and Prof. Dr. Jale Erzen. The jury also decided to give a special jury reward in the same category for Mualla Eyüboğlu Anhegger. This year's commemoration award was given to one of the earliest modernist architect of the Republican period in Turkey; Seyfi Arkan. The awards ceremony took place in METU Culture and Congress Centre in April 18th, 2008, where the nominees have taken their awards.

Jean Nouvel becomes the 2008 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate / Eds: Derin İnan

Jean Nouvel of Paris, France has been chosen as the 2008 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Nouvel, who is going to get his award in the ceremony which will be held in the 2nd June in Washington, was regarded by the prize jury as an architect whose projects transform the landscapes in which they are built, often becoming major urban events in their own right. Nouvel who came to international attention with the completion of his Institut du

Monde Arabe (usually referred to as IMA) in 1987, now has several projects in the United States and in Europe. His unique approach, driven by the specificities of context, program, and site has proven effective in numerous successes around the world. The article collects the jury citations and comments on the architecture of Nouvel as well as providing an overview to his portfolio.

EVENTS

On the 20th International Building and Life Congress ad Its Future / Mehmet Saner

The International Building and Life Congress, organised by the Chamber of Architects Bursa Branch in March 20-22nd 2008, in Bursa celebrated its 20th cycle this year. The theme of the congress, which is being held since 1989, was "Power and Architecture". Building and Life Congresses after the first period, covering first six years, always have chosen a different theme for each meeting. It won't be wrong to state that these selected themes are not only directly related to architectural matters but are also complemented with different themes. Therefore the theme selected for each meeting acts as mediator between architecture, its activity fields to other fields of interest and disciplines. By giving a brief survey on the inherent aims and achievements of the Congress, the author criticizes whether these congress series were successful in achieving a multidisciplinary character or nor. For Saner the over population of the architects attending to the conference obstruct the intrinsic character of the congress as well as contradict with the outlined goals of the congress.

Istanbul Hosted the UIA Region II. Meeting and Forum of Architects of the Black Sea Region / Eds: Tuğçe Selin Tağmat

 
The Chamber of Architects of Turkey has hosted two special events in February 21-22nd 2008 in Istanbul. The first event; Forum of Architects of the Black Sea Region Meeting had taken place with the attendance of an enlarged group of countries like Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. The opening of the forum was followed by a panel, where the common regional issues were discussed and an agreement for the enhancement of the collaboration between the member countries was achieved. The author while summarizing the issues that were discussed in the panel also gives a summary from the declaration prepared upon the meeting for the implementation of certain actions to be taken within the region. Following event, UIA Region II. Meeting took place next day on 22nd February, where besides the contribution of representative members of architectural associations from East Europe and Middle East, UIA and ACE directors were also present in the meeting.  The meeting provided a productive platform for evaluating the issues and sharing ideas before the general assembly and the UIA Torino Congress, which will take place in July 2008 in Italy.
 
AGENDA

An Interview with the President of the Architects' Council of Europe, Juhani Katainen

Upon arrival to Turkey in order to attend to the Forum of Architects of the Black Sea Region and II. Region UIA Meeting, we have made an interview with the president of the Architects' Council of Europe, Juhani Katainen. The interview consists of his remarks made on the questions regarding the destiny of the recent "urban regeneration" projects in Turkey and in other countries, the problems we face in the accreditation of architectural education and continuous professional development and possible strategies for establishing an architectural policy in Turkey and in other world countries.
 

An Interview with the President of the International Union of Architects (UIA), Gaeten Siew

The president of the International Union of Architects (UIA), Gaeten Siew answered some of our questions as well as sharing his opinions on the forthcoming UIA 2008 Torino Congress and the expectations he has for the event in general. The possible links that can be achieved between 2005 Istanbul Congress and 2008 Torino, as well as how the selected theme is hoped to contribute to the congress in general were the other issues discussed within the interview.  He furthermore presented his ideas on Istanbul being the 2010 Cultural Capital of Europe.
 
FILE: Discourse and Architecture Editor: Gürhan Tümer
The file includes five articles. The first article: "A Manifesto on Discourse" by Gürhan Tümer tries to carry out a 20th century popular expression technique, which we rarely come across today. Therefore he manifests the theme of the file; ‘discourse' through certain definitions. His analysis put forward the necessity, function, benefits and inspirational role of the concept. The following article belongs to Emel Kayın and is named as "Discourse on ‘Freedom' and the Liberation Experience of Architecture". The author picks up the concept of freedom and analyses the issue first in the pot of philosophy and later in architecture. Her article tries to put forward a discourse on the role and issue of freedom in modern architecture.  The third article; "Discourse on Contemporary Architecture and Knowledge on Natural Sciences: ‘New Scientific Concepts for a ‘New' Architecture" belong to Ülkü İnceköse. The author gives a detailed survey with concrete examples on how the new discourses in19th century in natural sciences reflected and transferred to architectural discourse. Zeynep Tuna Ultav's article is called; "Architectural Discourse in the Literature of J.G. Ballard". The article focuses on the relations between literature and architecture through analyzing the dystopia novels of the science fiction writer, J.G. Ballard. The discourse that Ballard puts forward in his critical approach to modern architecture is compared to the critical discourse that architects perform towards similar issues. The last article of the file belongs to Ahenk Yılmaz and is titled as "The Transformation of Monumental Discourse: (Anti)Monumentalising the Gallipoli War". The article focuses on the two different discourses on monumentality and how these are reflected on the forms of the monuments. The author takes the Gallipoli War Area as the subject of his comparisons and analysis.
 
COMPETITION
Kahramanmaraş Culture Park National Architectural Competition
Situated in the centre of the city, where the main arteries come together to form a central junction, the competition area is not only in the reach of people living in Kahramanmaraş, but also has a loaded traffic circulation. The culture park that is planned to be formed in the area should meet the social and cultural needs of the citizens as well as it should provide the necessary natural setting and green areas within the city centre. The competition opened by the Kahramanmaraş Municipality tried to achieve a recreational area both for cultural and natural needs of its citizens. Among the 74 projects submitted to the competition the jury gave 3 awards, 5 mentions and 10 purchase awards. The first award was given to the project of Özgür Bingöl, İlke Barka and Emre Savga, where the integration of the build structure to the natural setting was found innovative and thoroughly analyzed. The second prize was given to the project of Nur Çağlar, Zehra Aksu, Adnan Aksu and Nihat Eyce, where the third was given to the project of Mustafa Yıldız.
 
ARCHITECTURAL CRITICISM
Fathers Who Eat their Children: Today's Cities / Şevki Vanlı
Moving from a belief that the cities and buildings each have destinies like people and that the science of urban planning cannot be defined through strict regulations, formulas or certain mathematical calculations, the author tries to get into the development strategies that our cities face from the Republican period to today. The short historical survey emphasizes the complex and multi-layered development of the city and its architecture, mentioning the effects of public matters and the reflections of governmental, administrative problems on our cities. In this regard the author criticizes the dense projects, being produced by TOKİ nearly in every city of the country and how they affect the characteristics and certain qualities of our cities through the intensity of the population they create. Another example is the role of the new gigantic shopping malls, which in contrast with the old city fabric generate alternative city centers.  In his views, new settlement areas integrating with the existing city, create a contrast with their scale and proportions in almost every example.
 
ARCHITECTURE OF THE REPUBLICAN PERIOD
A Loss in Modern Turkish Architecture: Number 25 Karşıyaka Forest Administration Service Building / Feyzal Özkaban
Karsıyaka of İzmir, has become an attractive territory after the burning down of the quality dwelling settlements in the centre of the city and the developments following the population exchange after the Republic. The article goes through the dwelling projects build in the defined territory and carried out by governmental enterprises of the Republican period. It further focuses on one of the significant dwelling houses; Number 25 Karşıyaka Forest Administration Service Building. The author emphasizes that the building has gone trough a silent demolishing process and one of our significant modern heritage has also melted into air. The main intention is to document the formal and social qualities of one of our modern architecture through underlining its spatial organizations, the architectural reflections of the period on dwelling houses and the legal conditions that the building has experienced in its final years before getting demolished.
 
MEA ARCHITECTURA MEA CULPA
Autographs of the Ones Who Signed Modernism / Gürhan Tümer
There are many signatures under modernism. However the ones that belong to the ‘four chiefs'; Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius are rather different in their contribution than the rest of the signatures. Tümer's examples emphasize this fact.