Architectural Design Studio

Hey dear steemians :) I’m graduated (yeaaa!!)

It’s something very big for me because after all the lectures in Architecture school in Turkey, I was keep failing on my graduation project (because of a sexist, pathriarchal minded academician, I believe)*

Anyway, finally it’s over and I wanted to share my works on Steemit!

I’m terribly sorry if I’ve made so many grammer mistakes. I have to make this post by my phone and it’s very difficult. Still, please let me know my mistakes by the comments and I will correct them :) many thanks...

This term, the school requested me to work on a field that hosts old and abandoned factory buildings back to early 1900’s in Eskisehir in Turkey. The most critical decision was deciding how to take action around these abandoned buildings.

So, I made some reseaeches to understand their role in the memory of the city. Then I figured out, one of the biggest transportation projects in the history just passes through the field. The railway of the Berlin-Baghdad.

After the WW I, in the early ages of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal, aka Ataturk, announced the financial development plans for the modern Turkey. He and other political figures decided to produce any production which it’s possible to find its raw material inside the borders of the country. (They thought, it’s the way to complete independence) Eskisehir city was choosen to host some of the new (today abandoned) factory buildings of the Republic of Turkey for its location which also includes the locomotive workshops that was originally built for the Berlin-Baghdad railway.

(A photo of the workshops from my personal archive. Workers used to rotate the rails to direct locomotives to any workshop)

After the construction of the factories, in 1950’s, some houses and social facilities were built and that was a huge step for the development of the city.

Anyway, nowadays this factory field has a centeral position in the city and any corner is financially valuable. Bussinessmen are seeking for any piece of area to build residentials by completely destroying the abandoned factories.

Here is a map I personally prepared and colored the areas which used to host old factory buildings.

As you see, some of them are already destroyed for multistory residentials.

Anyway, for their importance and role in the history, I decied to take them as monumental structures and name the field as Monument of Self Production.

In my project, while the structures itselves play a role as monuments, the interiers were suggested as exhibition and installation places.

(My masterplan that pulls the traffic out of the field and two site plans stand for before and after. On the before map, red areas stand for the factories that are still existing today. Blue ones were partly destroyed and green ones were destroyed completely but there are still some traces. White ones were destroyed also and no traces left)

Well, you can see the railway station at the southest parts of the maps. It was orginally built for the Berlin-Baghdad railway but nowadays, it serves to the passengers. I thought, two of the buildings and the trees are define a city gate for the passengers come from the station. Then I suggested to fill the spaces between the existing trees by the new ones. So the perception of the city gate might be stronger.

(Well, here is my model work and white beads stand for the existing trees while the red ones stand for the new trees.)

(An abandoned factory with its chimney: Dogan tile and Brick Factory)