READING THE PLACE Prof. Dr. Şengül Öymen Gür, TC Beykent University Opening Speech at "Pedestrian traces in urban centres" Symposium and Workshop in Trabzon, organized by the Chamber of City Planners ABSTRACT Character is the...
moreREADING THE PLACE
Prof. Dr. Şengül Öymen Gür, TC Beykent University
Opening Speech at "Pedestrian traces in urban centres" Symposium and Workshop in Trabzon, organized by the Chamber of City Planners
ABSTRACT
Character is the essential quality of an individual. It is the unique and differentiating aspects of individuals or group of individuals that are reflected in their appearance and attitudes and that help to identify them to a certain extent.
Identity refers to sameness and similarity rather than difference, in philosophy and is argued under concepts such as personal identity, problem of universals and the law of identity. Discussions on personal identity are assisted to who “I” and “self” are; and ‘although everything changes what remains the same from year to year’.
Personality traits are congenital and hereditary, and are difficult to change thereof. Whereas identity can be made, as far as the personality traits are eliciting and conducive. It is because identity can be adopted, knead, transformed and cast into molds. Personality is dependent on probability; by contrast identity is dependent on possibility.
Complex, dynamic interactions and tensions exist between personality and identity, that is, between the inherent and the becoming, especially in modern times due to the plurality of roles an individual has to undertake in social life. When the personality traits and role identity harmonically coincide it leads to aesthetic identities.
Characteristics (dominant personality traits) of a person, culture and physical environment are those that are continuous and persistent. These continuity and endurance of a set of properties set the difference between the identities. In other words, the differentiating factor of identities is the persistence of the inherent qualities of a system. From this outlook today’s towns and cities are equally identifiable as those of the past. What is more, silhouettes of towns are important personality traits, which help to identify the modern towns.
In this respect Turkish cities show a common character which can be defined as 6-8 story residential areas, surrounded by the squatters and the dirty light industry shacks and the broken down children’s playgrounds. Unfinished roofs and low quality wall materials nonresistant to climatic factors mark the buildings. They lack positive dominant qualities and merely represent and symbolize the conscious irresponsibility of the capital toward culture and environment.
The whole process can be reversed through the deciphering of the time-laden palimpsest in which lie the whole historical background, the cultural traces and the sustainable social spaces, which still fully function. Any design which takes the palimpsest- the fetus and the inherent personality traits of a town- as the point of departure will succeed in restoring and improving the identity of the town. Simply applying the Modern town planning laws and principles and Lynchean canons, which only define the geometry and substructure of towns will end up in the concealment of the particulars. Particulars embedded in the palimpsest are vital in emphasizing the differences of identity.
Deciphering the essence of differences could restructure urban identity, which transpires from the rank--ordered differences between settlements that I hope may ease comparisons at various levels and scales of meaning. Therefore my target in this article is to approach the urbanities that naturally inhabit basic differences in terms of geography, history and culture with internalized regional sensitivity and emotions; and to rummage into the palimpsest.
Each city has a story of its own. The heroes of this story have built up the generative textures of the city, and have embroidered into stone their value, worldviews and life styles, with or without refinement. Thus, every city has a built in Id. This Id, which sometimes reveals itself through most difficult excavations and is therefore most difficult to attend, is contingent with the power, uniqueness and beauty of geography. The most commerced cities are those that are most beautiful, fruitful and productive. This “will to be” of cities is molded with reason over time and eventually consist in the ego of the city. Defense, security, accumulations, surplus value, power tensions have imbued the city with value and meaning and craftsmanship has given its form. Thus, “will to be” and “reason” of cities has been carved into the palimpsest over the history. I have deeply contemplated as to where the reason of the city exactly lies. To my phenomenological experience and knowledge it lies in the line, place, unity of multiplicities, aesthetic balance of modulations, thresholds, openings, and niches. The line in the palimpsest steers, flows from the narrow to the wide; filters from the wide to the narrow, intersects, negotiates; speeds the rhythm of life with the “abbaras”, passages and the shortcuts. All is embedded in the palimpsest. Do not question; do not mess, since it has a reason. Lines and points of modern town are to steer you around. Whereas in the palimpsest there are stages where irregular activities take place as well as the regular. Palimpsest is a planned integrity in which everything is diligently knit. It might crack down if handled haphazardly and with rash.
Power of place neither does lie in its smallness nor in its bigness, nor even it is coherence with number of paths leading to it or the number of doors opening up to it. The power of place lies in its memory. And, may it owe somewhat to its wisdom and intrigues...Because a real place strolls, rests, amuse, justifiably allocates amenities. Thresholds, steps, garden and court walls which are available for sitting, fences, terraces, stairs, niches, pillars, consoles, eaves, banks, fountains, spills, lakes, statues, sometimes a single column or an old oak embraces you with daily life. Palimpsest is replete with keen messages waiting to be deciphered.
Modulations in the palimpsest are to be likened to words uttered by the mouth through the harmonious collaboration of the lips and the tongue. Fine aesthetics and flavor of high ethics is concealed in the fusion of private and public and in the sharing of public by the privates. Among these intricate transformation doors are of special importance. The strength of doors is neither in the stone, nor in the tile, not even in the timber, its strength is directly in itself. Every opening in the palimpsest has a functional and symbolic meaning as well.
Urban postmodernism is meant to replace the deflated urban planning concept by the concept of urban design, Urban design, which borrows the environmental management and social science traditions from the planning discipline and from the interdisciplinary disciplines such as environmental and architectural psychology; and which borrows design traditions from social utopias, architecture and landscape; and which contemplates with nature, human existence, architectural features, at least designs if does not profess plans. In this context, certain postmodern concepts such as those rendered above, which side by the rich and dignified human existence could be utilized as better means to realize the dreams of modern architecture and city planning. Hence, may be, the problems of identity could be overcome.
