THE END OF PRIVACY
WITHOUT INNOCENCE
THE CITY WHICH
CONSUMES ITSELF
Translated by Tugce Aytes
"A good
question is always greater
than the most brilliant answer." [1] Louis I. Kahn
METHOD
Self-enclosed dwellings
can be discussed in many ways. As a philosopher, I will look at
architecture with a philosophical eye and make some points clear, and
my purpose is to contribute the fact to be argued with hypothetical
judgments proposed with various conceptualizations and by taking them
as the basis.
I will try to look at
self-enclosed dwellings or building complexs, architecture, city,
urban ontology and urban sociology with a philosophical perspective
and discuss with various conceptualizations.
In the paper, I will
not establish the concepts as historical "subjects" and
expose how they manipulate the life but try to make them apparent.
Considering the words
"critics" and "philosophy", I call this
"philosophicritics" [2] My paper is based on
philosophicritics and leaves out formal academic principles. Here,
with the methodology of philosophicritics, I will try to make some
kind of an urban ontology, then an urban epistemology.
I will ask various
questions about the points which are discussed in the analysis based
on philosophicritics that takes Hartmannian ontology of building
complexes and propose hypothetical arguments regarding the related
points, and then conclude my paper. My ultimate aim is to keep loyal
to the aphorism of Kahn, which I mentioned at the beginning, and
generate various questions.
HARTMANNIAN ONTOLOGY
When we look at the
city with the understanding of being that Hartmann called the new
ontology we encounter two fundamental concepts: first, the real
territory of the city; second, the irreal territory of the city.
The city, the physical space of the building complex, which is the
sub-unit of the city, in the urban territory as a real realm of
existence and the effects on the urban identity are obvious to us.
The other is the irreal territory which will be thoroughly analyzed
here and made clear with various questions.
Before
ontology-epistemology relationship, Hartmann separates how the human
beings conceive the realm of existence, then the objects of the realm
of existence from aesthetical objects, and specifies it to make it
apparent. "It means that the aesthetical object or the work of
art is an ontic whole that is made up of a real front-structure and
an irreal back-structure in terms of the form of being (Madde, Hayat,
Ruh, Mana)[3]. Aesthetical object is autonomous because it has a
back-structure; this autonomy is a signification of its being for the
subject.
Human being is a being
that makes the connection between two realms of existence. With this
ontology, which he called new ontology, conceptualizes the human and
the being in a total manner.
THE ONTOLOGY OF THE
CITY AND/OR THE BUILDING COMPLEX
Now, let's try to deal
the concepts of the building complex and the city it is in, with the
methodology we mentioned at the beginning and with the theoretical
perspective. "Outside" is the city which is lived in.
"Dwelling" is close to the city. The building complex, the
dwellings and the subjects inside are close to the heterogeneousness
which fascism and totalitarian powers cannot tolerate and they leave
it out. Security is the symbolic guarantee of togetherness, just like
in the shopping malls. In the given historical course, symbols have
always existed. When the concepts of "outside",
"closure/closeness", "dwelling", "settlement"
and "city" are studied separately with a historical and
socio-politico-economical perspective, the point which all those
concepts integrate -remembering its content in the ancient era- is
ironically the "building complex, that shows clearly how this
fact appears in the conceptualizations of the ones who think about
the problematic of the building complex and in Turkish.
When Hartmann's
theoretical perspective is taken as fundamental, buildings can be
objectified in for ways, in terms of urban ontology. These are
objectified by ignoring the real territories of building complexes
and cities. Here, I did not totally stick to the Hartmannian irreal
territory of existence; I extended the conceptual content.
Firstly, the length of
the duration which inhabitants go through because of being relatively
outside the city and accordingly learned masochism: the inefficiency
it causes and its emotional, physical and social costs to the quality
of life. Each of these can be discussed under separate titles.
Moreover, the large part of the urban and architectural subjects who
are present there live this fact to the hilt. The effects of life in
the building complex on the individual and his/her family are of an
unpredictable size that cannot be ignored. Families and family
members cannot be adequately families, because they pass time in the
traffic instead of with each other; this also affects the identity of
the individual who gets a being in the family. In this context, I
find it useful to shortly mention the position of the old. The old,
who cannot ride cars or even use public transportation vehicles, are
condemned to communicate with the ones they can reach, not with their
friends. It is obvious that this will get deeper day by day as a
social problem.
Secondly, the
architecture and the plans of building complexes are not original,
and human beings and cultures inside are not analyzed as homogeneous.
In the process of becoming identical/being made identical, how is the
“plan” used as a means of power? As one of the fundamental
dynamics of the city, cultural variety loses its importance day by
day, as every building complex turns into an ideological means. While
urbanization is fed by heterogeneousness, a catastrophe is created
with ready plans [4] in terms of aesthetics. Apart from the
aesthetical aspect, these are applications which are totally imposed
from outside and are not included in the process of dwelling
production. As a part of a Jacobean mentality, this approach of
dwelling production tucks a mass of people who are in need of shelter
-I did not particularly say dwelling- into uniform plans.
Thirdly, the need of
security for sheltering from four variables, such as income,
prestige, serenity and security, which manipulate the buyers’
behaviors. While “the need for security” protects the building
complex and its inhabitants from outside, treats that will come from
inhabitants of the building complex is also ignored with an
ideological manipulation. The fact of security and being watched in
prison standards are encountered in ultra luxurious apartments,
shopping malls, schools, cafés and everywhere with relatively
cheaper technological devices. George Orwell’s “Big Brother” is
watching us wherever we are. In an era when running away and hiding
are probably the most meaningless things to do, the need for being
watched should be in no way meaningless and groundless. The end of
privacy increases the need for private space. The monotonous
homogeneousness which feeds totalitarianism as a result of society’s
demand for the concepts of “panoptic” which Foucault took from
Bentham and conceptualized in its relationship with the power in
another context and George Orwell’s “Big Brother”, and the
created need for security form the basis of the sense of community.
For this reason, in the life that is becoming uniform, every subject
wants to be different; not in the essence but in the form. Essence
can be ignored but the form never. Subjects need the forms to give
shape to their essences. A typical example for this is that a
clothing company or any company produces 1 piece from one of its
50-60 dollar cost products and can sell it for 50.000 dollars. This
example, that is, the urgent need for the same but the different
shows the size of the conflict experienced.
Fourth, the building
complexes and artificial sociologies which are separated from their
historical roots and are not formed by an evolution of a sociological
element and/or transforming and reproducing itself. As one of the
urban element that constitutes the city, building complexes take the
function in formal sense of neighborhood organizations in the cities.
That is the current situation! All right, what do we see when we take
a look at the accumulation of urbanization and architecture as a
Turkish superstructural institution? The most typical example in the
history is the urbanization of the Ottoman Empire. In Ottoman
urbanization, neighborhood organizations were the basic. Cities were
established from neighborhoods which are organized by pursuing humane
relationships around zaviye (hermitage) with the organization
of neighborhoods around Ulu Camii (the Great Mosque). What
gave the neighborhood its spirit was the “common sense” which is
in the history of philosophy conceptualized as the objective reason.
Neighborhoods were relatively homogeneous in terms of humane
relationships. However, the common feature that constitutes today’s
neighborhood or the building complex is their power to buy the same
thing. The sense of community or sociology originates from the fact,
from experiences. But I am of the opinion that here we cannot
sufficiently talk about a sociology which can produce life or
sociology. Because they lack the fundamental dynamics of it. This
analysis is no doubt the analysis of the “inside”; when looked at
the “outside”, its relationship with the outside, its
transitivity cannot be talked sufficiently either, or it is of size
that can be ignored. Then, this argument can be proposed as a
conclusion: The building complex does not have the fundamental
dynamics of the inside or the outside to be able to transform life.
The deprivation from the fundamental dynamics to transform life is
another sign of its artificial sociology. The building complex can
only live on artificial resuscitation. The humane relationship in the
building complex is founded upon the fifteen thousand year settled
life.
THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF
CITY OR BUILDING COMPLEX
Building complexes
which does not hold on to cultural heritage or is not sufficiently
nourished from this heritage, as stated above, are the shattering of
the common sense. We live an era where culture produced by common
sense is de facto aborted from cities and as an
addition to shopping, is tucked in places like shopping malls,
cultural centers, schools, universities. The spaces that intertwine
when urbanization is pushed outside the city, as Alexander pointed,
bring the eternal functionality of city units to an end. As a result
of this, the city and sociology is becoming arid. Even if not being a
result of a single will, the solutions which the architecture
produces push the mass of people or subjects to architectural
solutions (building complex, road, plaza, shopping mall, SPA, holiday
village, etc) whose functions house no other functions; as a result,
it makes us experience defined relationships. In this context, such
argument can be proposed: The subject is a being which is
produced and limited with this meaning of itself, and Architecture is
one of the fundamental devices of the Power (but the Power with
capital "P").
The common features of
spaces are that they are sterile, outside life and purchasable, and
in these terms, are tucked in the context of Adornian "Culture
Industry". In recent years, it disturbs the subjects which are
interested in architecture, sociology, philosophy, art, etc. About
this fact, such argument can be proposed: The building complexes
that transform into the fundamental units of the cities create spaces
as derivatives of themselves and reproduce the urban ontology, and
this generates a kind of ontological slip.
Taking this ontological
analysis as fundamental, I think that creating an urban epistemology
will give a different perspective about the city. This perspective
also contains the interdisciplinary perspective that has been often
mentioned lately. Cities show a more complex structure of their
identities in given historical periods. Besides, their dynamic
structure is also evolving rapidly and keeps its existence. Rapid
transformation makes it hard to grasp the fact of city. The rapid
aging of produced concepts categorize the present fact and makes is
problematic to understand, and causes perspective stay anachronical.
This makes it necessary to take the concept of urbanization with more
dynamic concepts and theories. It should be the reason why lately the
domain of Architecture is suffocated with theoretical-conceptual
studies and why architects ponder upon theoretical studies beside the
practice of architecture. At this point, especially in urban
transformation projects, we come across architects who also have a
"sociologist" identity, because architects act with
sociological concerns beside architectural concerns. Just as cities,
the subject of architect is rapidly evolving and goes through an
identity crisis. This identity crisis architects go through should
not be independent from the chaos cities are going through.
What is in the future
for cities and their inhabitants with the ontological slip? This
question about the concepts of city, urbanization, to urbanize,
inhabitance, culture, etc. waits strongly to be asked: Are city
and urbanization a "reified" (Adorno) realm of existence
which Power (Foucault) turned into an ideological device (Althusser)
and manipulate? Cities, building complexes, the habitants of
building complexes and the ones who "consume" and "produce"
urban culture have transformed into the subjects of the fact that
Adorno [5] conceptualized as "cultural industry" and again
with Adornian terms, it dissolves and is reified day by day.
Architecture also dissolves more everyday and is reified in the
popular culture with plazas, the buildings and skyscrapers.
When city is considered
as a living organism, it should be nourished; as long as channels of
life are open, it can feed the inhabitants. We, who are here,
witnessed and are witnessing the process where both Turkey and
Istanbul rapidly changes and transforms, not only from theoretical
books but also living personally in itself and as a subject with our
"support".
Instead of the need for
shelter for sustainable urban life, I think we should substitute the
concept of permanent settlement beyond the concept of the need for
dwelling.
When approached in
terms of accessibility, neither buildings in the building complex are
in relationship with each other nor are the building complexes in
relationship with the city. This lack of relationship impoverishes
the urban culture instead of enriching it.
The city is
transforming from a “value” which solves problems into an urban
“value” which deepens problems. While cities are rapidly growing,
their sociologies are also changing and the number of international
cities that were in the past limited with the centers of the empire
is now increasing day by day. “Global city is confronted with the
problem of weakening of communal sense and of the social life losing
its colors.” [6] In this climate, the sense of community has gained
more importance than the past and this feature should be taken into
consideration. Knowledge gives pain unless it cannot transform life;
however, knowledge is power, the power to transform life.
City is a kind of
organization of spaces, structures and urban elements. As a result,
it can be explained by being reduced to a concept of organization,
but it is important in what kind of series this organization takes
place. What is the social memory in an urban typology where building
complexes are main actors? Or can it be constituted? Do subjects who
live here have a collective memory? How can the lack of collective
memory constitute collective life which depends upon the common
sense? “There are primary and secondary types, that is, the
typology of the dwelling which constitutes the textural integrity
with public structures and their singular beings and the city is made
up of the organization of these two distinct typologies. As a result,
typology and its integration in the urban morphology explains us the
logic of the city and the space, and this forms the collective
memory, that is, the historical memory of the urban community.” [7]
BASAKSEHIR, AS A
TYPICAL EXAMPLE OF A BUILDING COMPLEX
Finally, I want to
criticize a typical example, Basaksehir, with the points mentioned
above. If I propose a presuming thesis it is because of the
unproficient courage of a philosopher. The example I am going to
mention is about a new urban site that is materialized rapidly. The
structuring of aforementioned area still goes on rapidly. Basaksehir
is comprised of dwelling type and building complexes that is built
without relying on urban heritage in terms of urban designment.
Shortly, it can be stated as “a building complex made up of
building complexes, an ‘urban’ unit that cannot transcend the
building complex.”
Basaksehir appears
before us as a very typical example. In the area with around 40.000
dwellings, the generation of land and buildings still goes on
rapidly. Although in Istanbul an urban planning is done in macro
terms, buildings are not built in consideration with their
relationships with offices. As a result, every morning on weekdays,
ten thousands of people hit the roads and try to go to their offices
and in the evenings back to their homes. They go through the same
problem on weekends to go to and come back from the places of
entertainment. Basaksehir is reduced by its habitants rather to the
function told in the idiom “like a hotel” or can only function in
this way. With a harsher expression, it can be conceptualized as
“urban prison” or “urban house of suffering”. We can mention
lots of new “urban” areas such as Bahcesehir, Beylikduzu,
Halkalı, Atasehir, Cekmekoy and so on, which are the products of the
same “mentality”; moreover, in relatively areas inside the city,
building complexes are spreading rapidly. Building complexes which is
at heart comprised of social dwellings are transformed into prestige
objects and marketed. The demolishment of the areas contained in the
urban transformation and instead of them, the dwelling production
that can shortly be called “becoming TOKI” brings about different
problems that go beyond this paper.
CONCLUSION
As summarized in the
ontological analysis above, building complexes cannot produce urban
areas for their inhabitants, because they are transformed into
neighborhoods that are stripped from their rich functionality.
However, consumers buy those built dwellings and consume them in a
very short time. Yes, they do so. I particularly used the concept of
consumption. Instead, the city has a structure that can continually
reproduce itself with urban dynamics and especially by its
inhabitants. Building complexes deprive of theses dynamics in many
ways; let alone supporting urban subjects who live there, this
deprivation stands as the most important obstacle in front of their
becoming urbanized. At this point, such argument can be proposed:
Building complexes which neither have its own feature of
urbanization nor can urbanize the subjects inside are the ideological
obstacle in front of the city and its subjects to be urbanized. I
said ideological obstacle, because even if this is not actualized
with the manipulation of a particular single will, it brings forth
ideological consequences as its results. Foucault’s statement
“Future is the intervention exercised on the present” gives us
clues about what is going on generally in Turkey and particularly in
Istanbul. We should first create an urban ontology and find out what
to derive from present ontological structure and generate knowledge
concerning this structure. And with generated knowledge we should
intervene “the present”. Every example experienced is a model
offered to life. Whoever is in power, his/her model turns into
paradigm. As reflected in the local press, there are lots of
countries in the world that wants to become TOKI.
Now, I want to quote
from Deniz Incedayi about the fact of dwelling in this context.
“Beyond looking for an architectural answer to the problem of
shelter, dwelling is an offer of life style. For this reason, the
multidimensional relationship it establishes with its environment
comprises one of the important areas of investigation of designing
process.” [8] In this quote, what Incedayi expresses with two
sentences is clear. Now, what are we to see when we look at building
complexes with the knowledge of architecture? Does Basaksehir bear
these features? And so, how can one be the part of this process? No
doubt that such point is also beyond the limits of the paper.
Today, in Turkey, the
city means unfortunately the same thing as for the ones who take
shelter somewhere, for example in a tree hollow or in a cave to
escape from rain or hail. The Turkish idiom “a place to live
[literally; to put one’s head]” explains the perspective of urban
subject to the dwelling in a very typical way. Besides, in Turkish,
concepts of “shelter [barinak]” and “dwelling [konut]”
and “acts of “sheltering [barinmak]” and
“perching/dwelling [konmak]” shows that settling is seen
as a temporary need. City is not a place to take shelter but to live.
When the dwelling is reduced to a space to take shelter and the city
to be nourished, both hare singularized in functional means.
All of these are to
experience the course getting severe with the Republic of the
renovation/civilization efforts whose face is towards the West since
the middle of 19th century, going beyond the Atlantic
after 1980’s and adopting an American style; however, this
alienates inhabitants to themselves and also alienates the
architecture as “an aggressive object of ideology” to its
reservoirs in terms of both urban culture and architectural
resolutions.
QUESTIONS AND/OR
PROBLEMS
Can urban ontology give
new dimensions to the concept of city?
Is urban epistemology
possible?
Is becoming urbanized
possible with building complexes which transform into the basic unit
of urbanization?
Is urbanization
possible without taking urban values as the basis?
Can cities be urbanized
without generating urbanization?
To what extent can
cities be urbanized without nourishing from its traditions?
Are building complexes
the neighborhood of cities?
Is the production of
buildings in building complexes are democratic? If not, can it be
democratized? How?
KEYWORDS
“urban ontology”,
“urban epistemology”, “culture industry in architecture”,
“power in architecture”, “urban sustainability”
V. Metin Bayrak
Philosopher
[1] CONRADS, Ulrich.
(1991) 20. Yüzyıl Mimarisinde Program ve Manifestolar, Şevki Vanlı
Mimarlık Vakfı Yayınları, İstanbul.
[2] Philosophicritics:
Trials to conceptualize present facts; trials to think about the
facts that are yet not thought or philosophically dealt and as a
result of these, the methodology of thinking which proposes
hypothetical raw arguments and aims at producing hypothetical
judgments.
[3] TUNALI, İsmail.
(1957) İntegral Bir Estetik Olarak Ontolojik Estetik, Felsefe
Arkivi, Volume: III - issue 3, Separate Volume, p. 160
[4] Because the
consequences which the total sameness of ready plans generates are
also beyond the content of this study, it is dealt without taking
this aspect into consideration.
[5] Adorno explains why
he uses the term “culture industry” in such way: “Instead of
the term ‘mass culture’, we found it appropriate to use the term
“culture industry”; after all, they could suggest that it is a
problem of culture which is derived from masses by itself, they could
consider it as a modern form of popular art, the latter should be
definitely distinguished from the culture industry. Culture industry
integrates the old and the familiar in a new qualification.”
ADORNO, T., (2003) Kültür Endüstrisini Yeniden Düşünürken,
Cogito, issue: 36, p. 76
[6] İNCEDAYI, Deniz.
(2005) Mimarist, issue 16, Tasarım Felsefesinde "Farklı"yı
Algılama Biçimi Üzerine Üzerine, İnsanın Farklı Durumları
Karşısında Mimar(lığ)ın İşlevi, p. 101-106, p. 106
[7] YÜCEL, Atilla.
(1999) Mimarlıkta Dil ve Anlam: Seminer, TMMOB Mimarlar Odası
İstanbul Büyükkent Şubesi Eğitim ve Kültür Araştırmaları
Mesleki Bilimsel Çalışma Kurulu (EKA-MBÇK) Felsefeden Mimarlığa
Bakışlar Dizisi, İstanbul, p. 43
[8] İNCEDAYI, Deniz.
(2003) Mimarist, issue 7, p. 81-86, p. 81
