EVOLUTION OF SPACE ORGANIZATION Throughout the History of Modern and Post-Modern Architecture

Şengül Öymen Gür's new book The Evolution of Spatial Organization Throughout Modern and Post-Modern Architectural History, which offers a qualified, comprehensive, and original re-reading of 20th-century architecture, has been published by YEM Yayın.

A re-reading of Modern and Post-Modern Architecture could have been done from political, economic, ethical, linguistic, semantic, aesthetic, and factual perspectives. However, in this book, Prof. Dr. Şengül Öymen Gür takes a different approach; she broadens the scope of conventional architectural history by considering the theoretical stages of the evolution of architectural space and by adding country-specific supplements to central historical narratives. Thus, architectural history and theory are re-read through the lens of spatial organization and its formal tools…

Şengül Öymen Gür, who always views architectural history through the eyes of a designer, reviewing it and making connections based on what stimulates her memory, summarizes the rather exhausting and intense process of preparing the book and its content as follows:

“… Ecphoria is indispensable without the memory, perceptions, and emotions of time. It is a bidirectional process that involves seeing trees from the forest and seeing the forest from the trees. Therefore, I experienced a very exhausting process while writing this book. I worked with the cautious courage of advanced age… I'm not even talking about the benefits of seeing architecture on site, or having seen it, as much as reading architectural history and selectively narrating it… I tell critics: do not make buildings you haven't seen or experienced the subject of your critical essays, and do not describe them as if you have seen them. I chose my own experiences as examples. Architecture is like love; it cannot be known without being lived…

The organizational feature of architectural space is the most intimate, closest, and most important design feature that genuinely and emotionally touches the lives of local and universal individuals, groups, and the global community. This design feature, which specialists trained as historians almost never mention, is the very essence of architectural reality. The dimension related to geometry and arts concerning form is of secondary importance next to spatial organization. The structural and construction techniques chosen in relation to spatial organization are tools, not determinants, of organization. The fundamental concepts of spatial organization are linked to the definitions of 'place' and 'human.' The best organizational concepts arise from these paradigms and ultimately serve them. Therefore, a text on architectural history should focus on the creative inventions that have emerged throughout history, enabling the reader to connect with the architectural project and attracting their interest from this perspective. From this starting point, in this book, I introduced concepts such as flowing spaces, defining-creating place, making space, core solutions-foci that define place, the increase and complexity of axes in design offering options for human behavior, and benefiting from healthy natural light, all of which are characteristic of the Modern Architecture period, which I consider a major architectural revolution, and which positively influenced human, group, and societal behavior. I discussed typological revolutions made in favor of humans during the Modern Architecture period in areas such as open offices, museums, libraries, orphanages, university campuses, housing, and mass housing.

In Post-Modern Architecture, I discussed concepts of spatial organization such as the dramatization of nature, the reproduction of nature, organization with natural and historical traces, fragmentation-fragments, disintegration and dispersion, in-betweenness, contextualism, scenario writing, historical elements, neighborhood, creative synthesis of existing and new, opening-closing, unity of opposites, transparency, circulation areas, atriums-galleries, hyper-connectivity, hyper-continuity, or evolving like nature, etc.

I touched upon the creation of space from non-space and the relationship between urban design and humans. I aimed to increase the reader's enthusiasm by conveying the reactions of world architects regarding environmental sensitivity…

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As Modern Architectural language became a global language, all disciplinary certainties in philosophy, science, and the arts began to be questioned. Radical and convincing modern social utopias fragmented and became stars. While some smaller stars raked through the ashes of pre-Modern accumulations, others declared "re-contextualization." In addition to examining the factual meaning of context, phenomenological organizational concepts were accepted as design concepts. Among these, concepts such as anchorage, the ways a building touches the ground, the intertwining of thought with the world, the flow of the body in space, the relationship between space and time, the poetic potential of lived space, the materiality of place, and parallax were transferred to the work.

The concept of type is important for understanding yesterday and today and for designing the future. The configurations of types were explained in the study, and in Post-Modernism, the importance of configuring types through diagrams in motion was highlighted, in relation to the concepts of infinite continuity and infinite connectivity. It was indicated that new creations could be entered into with them without disrupting the semantic structure. Concepts such as syntactic experiments using Deconstructive Architecture as a tool, blurring, folding, sign (signifier/signified) deception, affect, sublime, transformation with cinematographic techniques (morphing), in-between, and interstitial transitions were introduced and explained through examples. While all this was happening, the criteria of Modern Architecture continued for the people. However, Modern Architecture was such a broad selection that, in the hands of some architects, it found its place in architectural practice as white villas and modest factual aesthetic products.

Advancements in the materials of structural and facade systems led to a kind of competition in Neoliberal corporate structures. Under the name "Envelope Architecture," massive steel+glass towers covered the commercial areas of cities. The study pointed out how inter-firm competition transformed the urban fabric, consumed public spaces, and rendered urban skylines unrecognizable. It was mentioned that cities fragmented and developed like archipelagos, but the book also emphasized that the most dominant archipelagos consisted of widespread (minuscule) architecture.

In the following section, the last century in the dimension of spatial organization, which is considered vitally important in architecture, was scanned, and concepts that allow for communication were identified. Concepts from Modern Architecture such as flowing spaces (free plan), defining-creating place, making space, complexity and harmony (heterotopism), creating core solutions-foci, increasing and complicating axes in design, and playing with natural light were deemed very useful for understanding the period and shedding light on the future. The enrichment in organizational concepts was explained in the context of how it allowed for revolutions in various building types, such as open offices, museums, libraries, orphanages, university campuses, house typologies, and the organization of common areas in mass housing.

In Post-Modern Architecture, concepts of spatial organization were enriched depending on their feasibility. Here, concepts such as the dramatization of nature, the reproduction of nature, organization with natural and historical traces in the context of traces, fragmentation against the integrity of modernism, disintegration and dispersion, in-betweenness, context, the voice of place, scenarios (dramas, historical elements, follies, neighborhood, etc.), "event" design, stitching times (creative synthesis of existing and new), opening/closing (plan, site plan interpretations), unity of opposites, transparency (literal/factual/experiential), geometric articulations at the plan level, circulation areas under the general heading of "serving spaces," atriums/galleries, and hyper-connectivity, hyper-continuity, evolving like nature, which came to the fore with Zaha Hadid, as well as creating space in unfavorable places, were highlighted. This list could have been much longer, and this book would never have ended; the rest was left to the reader's creativity and discoveries.

Later, by addressing urban design-human relations, architects were called to be sensitive to human expectations from space. A wide palette was used by bringing some differences of architects regarding environmental sensitivity to the agenda. Toyo Ito's Romanticism, Shigeru Ban's Authenticism, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw's Situationalism, Herzog & de Meuron's Contextualism, Sir Norman Foster's Revolutionism became the guiding attitudes underlined here, and the chapter concluded with the Sustainability Manifesto.

Various technical advancements and inventions greatly influenced mass/facade patterns in Modern and Post-Modern Architecture, whether the space required change or not. After mainstream categories such as Gestalt Theory, Pragnanz, Cubism, de Stijl, and Brutalism, which are mass/facade organization paradigms of Modernism, were introduced at the building level, the patterns of form emerging in Modern and Post-Modernism were explored. Various applications flowing from the most universal to the most specific were identified. These included emphasizing corners with curvilinear surfaces, rationalist pragnanzes, glass towers, symbolizing power, framing the facade, bundling form, pyramidal masses and/or their integration with regular rectangular prisms, deconstructing form (Deconstructivist movements), and recurring patterns such as biomimicry and biophilia.

In Modern and Post-Modern Architecture, formats are the most dynamic and transformable/convertible patterns at an international level. They circulate globally independently of the identity and success of the space, but their original owners are always known. These include: grids with equivalent horizontal and vertical effects creating facade texture, strip windows, corner windows, enlivening monotonous masses with shallow Baroque movements, evaluating "Early Modern window" texture, arcades (archways) creating a sense of depth, designing eclectic entrance facades with formats interpreted from history, making various historical accents, animating the facade with circular derivative shapes, emphasizing the main entrance with a column, using elements that give the impression of columns on facades, enclosed cantilevers, circular balconies, door jambs, horizontal facade bands, strip windows, forming facades from the repetition of mass parts, coloring facades, creating facades from two-color horizontal bands, making symmetrical tears-asymmetrical tears creating a sense of depth, carving corners as an entrance emphasis, using a triangle or arch as an intermediary form, using flat and curved surfaces together on the same facade, predominantly using cylindrical forms, utilizing triangular prisms interspersed on facades as windows, making cubic assemblies on facades, making de Stijl articulations, large void facades, stairs on facades, bridges on facades, and creating cornices on facades. These were exemplified from global and local contexts. Elements such as entrance stairs, balconies, tears, shutters, brise-soleils, blinds, and entrance canopies, identified as tectonic details, were determined as tectonic elements compatible with the building's style. Using these, and capturing the technology of the time while using them, was scanned within the scope of the expression of space.

The book, edited by Mesut Kaya, was proofread by Burcu Agalar, final reading by Mecit Demir, cover design by Esen Karol, graphic design and application by Resul Atabay, and print preparation by Kemal Kara.

Table of Contents

THOUGHTS ON ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY, THEORY, AND CRITICISM

Theory

Theory-Criticism Relationship

Inherent Problems of Architectural Historiography

Classification of Architectural Historiography and Critical/Experimental History

Purpose of the Book

MODERNITY AND MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Revolutions Paving the Way for Modernity

Modernity (Modernization) in Our Country

Building Types in the Modern Architectural Period

Urbanization and Architecture Relations in the Modern Architectural Period

PARADIGMS AND CONCEPTS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Rationalism (Standardization/Modular Coordination)

Measurements and Standards

Minimalism/Purism/Asceticism

Elementalism (German Elementalism)

Organic Architecture and Heterotopism

Functionalism

Structural Potentials

Liberation of Form

POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Questioning the Certainty of Philosophy, Science, and Art

Lack of Utopia

Language and Meaning

Phenomenology: Concepts, Perspectives, and Architecture

History and Autonomy

Language and Grammar: Peter Eisenman

Deconstruction Philosophy and Its Relationship with Architecture

Ongoing Deconstructivist Architecture

Ongoing Modernism

Participatory Design

Common or Minuscule Architecture

SPATIAL ORGANIZATION IN ARCHITECTURE

Concepts of Spatial Organization in Modern Architecture

Typological Revolutions in the Modern Architectural Period

Concepts of Spatial Organization in Post-Modern Architecture

To Conclude the Infinite

MASS/FACADE PATTERNS IN MODERN AND POST-MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Mass/Facade Organization Paradigms of Modern Architecture

Standardization of Mass/Facade Organization Paradigms of Modern Architecture

In Conclusion

WHO IS PROF. DR. ŞENGÜL ÖYMEN GÜR?

Şengül Öymen Gür is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (UPENN), GSAS (PhD, 1978); she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship (1972-77) and a DAAD Scholarship (2002; 2008). In her research supported by DAAD, she examined German Modern and Post-Modern Architecture on-site and published various articles.

She served at Karadeniz Technical University (KTÜ) between 1971 and 2009, becoming a professor in 1989. During this period, she taught project courses at the undergraduate level, as well as courses on Modern Architecture and Post-Modern Architecture. In the graduate program, she taught various courses such as Architectural Theory and Concepts, New Developments in Architecture, Research Methods and Techniques, and the Housing Problem. She is currently a faculty member at Istanbul Beykent University.

Dr. Gür is an active member of international organizations such as CICA (International Committee of Architectural Critics) and WA (World Architecture). She is a periodic member of international organizations like IAPS, DRS, CIB W84, IAHS, and an honorary member of BTI (Bund Türkischer Ingenieure und Akademiker e.V) and SEA (The Sustainable Environment Association). She is an advisory board member and editor of Space Studies of Planning and Architecture (https://spacestudies.co.uk); editor of Yakınmimarlık (TRNC) and FSM Mimarlık journals; field editor of Beykent University Scientific Studies Journals and Anadolu University Scientific Studies Journals; and a reviewer for SRE, e-Books, JADE, JAAP, MEGARON, A/Z, Gazi, KARAM, Uludağ, Trakya, Tasarım+Kuram journals. She writes a monthly "Opinion" column for YAPI magazine.

She has conducted research for many institutions, including the State Planning Organization (DPT), and received the Architecture Foundation Research Award. She is the author of approximately 30 books and over 500 international and national articles. She has trained over 100 academics in her country. She is married with two children.