Papers by Erdem Üngür
Arredamento, 2024
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New Perspectives on Turkey
After the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, the Turkish state started to produce a new official hist... more After the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, the Turkish state started to produce a new official history of the event as a narrative of popular resistance against a military coup for the sake of democracy. This narrative with a religious aura was supported by “democracy watch” meetings and new commemoration days, museums, and monuments across Turkey. It was based on four concepts, symbolized by the Rabia sign: one nation, one homeland, one flag, and one state. However, the use of the Rabia sign has fallen from grace recently, creating a critical gap or “glitch” in the mnemonic infrastructure. This paper offers a visual categorization of July 15 monuments across Turkey and positions them in the historiography of Turkish national monuments. Finally, Rabia monuments are analyzed as a case study to show part of the complex (trans)national narratives of the “New Turkey.”
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Betonart, 2023
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Mimarist, 2018
The city of Istanbul, which is divided into three parts geographically by two water ways, began t... more The city of Istanbul, which is divided into three parts geographically by two water ways, began to expand into Thrace after the Second World War by penetrating the land walls. The London Asphalt in the west and the Ankara Asphalt in the east were connected by the Bosphorus Bridge in 1973 thus bringing the E-5 Highway into existence, which was a concrete dream since 1930s. E-5 (D-100) Highway was also thought to be a design tool in order to control the urbanization of Istanbul and prevent the growth of the city towards the north. However, on the contrary, the highway started the urban sprawl towards the Northern Forests by creating new highway connections. The highway increased automobilization while changing the time and speed perception of the citizens. In connection with the public transportation system it also created new residential and commercial areas changing the land values. These new climatized, sanitized and securitized buildings with different programs such as university, busidence or hospital created also a new closed circulation system with a new indebted and mediatized subject in it. In this paper, the concept of urbanism should be understood as a domesticating tool in the sense of apolitical biological reproduction, which removes the ancient distinction between oikos and polis. Urbanization, in this sense, is a part of the control technique focusing on the organization and government of a new political subject called ‘population’. Michel Foucault and later many authors such as Giorgio Agamben and Antonio Negri have used the notion of biopolitics/biopower in different contexts and with different interpretations in order to examine these modern governmental techniques. Following this conceptual pathway, it is intended to start a historical and theoretical examination of the biopolitical urbanization of Istanbul in relation with D-100 Highway.
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Betonart, 2019
Pe-Re-Ja Cologne Factory is one of the latest buildings of the famous Turkish architect Seyfi Ark... more Pe-Re-Ja Cologne Factory is one of the latest buildings of the famous Turkish architect Seyfi Arkan. It was opened on July 9, 1967 by the prime minister Süleyman Demirel, almost one year after the death of the architect. The history of the factory is exemplary for the decentralization of industry at that time and the post-Prost urban transformation of Istanbul via D-100 Highway. Pe-Re-Ja also allows us to speculate on the new subjectification of the working class via spatial organization and makes the labour struggle during import substituting industrialization period visible. Although partly demolished and transformed into a sports shop, the building still exist on D-100 Highway in Bahçelievler in spite of the heavy urban transformation around.
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IJAUS, Mar 1, 2017
D-100 state highway (still E-5 in everyday language) which is remembered mostly due to traffic ac... more D-100 state highway (still E-5 in everyday language) which is remembered mostly due to traffic accidents was in fact an important transportation backbone and infrastructure investment, which totally changed the macroform of post-Prost Istanbul. D-100 highway was completed in 1973 with the opening of the Bosphorus Bridge and its connecting freeways; and actually after 1974 when the Halic Bridge was put into service. In accordance with the criticisms of urbanists and architects of that period in UCTEA (Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects), the first bridge has created new demands and in 1988 second Bosphorus Bridge was opened. At the present time, the construction of third Bosphorus Bridge is finished and it is put into service.
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DIYÂR, 2020
Edirnekapı Martyrs’ Cemetery (Edirnekapı Şehitliği, 1926), which is located in one of the oldest ... more Edirnekapı Martyrs’ Cemetery (Edirnekapı Şehitliği, 1926), which is located in one of the oldest and largest cemeteries of Istanbul, contains the graves of mainly Muslim soldiers who died during the Balkan War and WWI, especially those wounded in the Çanakkale War (Gallipoli Campaign), which is considered the forerunner of the Turkish War of Independence (Kurtuluş Savaşı, 1919-1923) and one of the influential founding myths of the Turkish Republic. The soldiers who have lost their lives in the war against the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) since the end of the 1980s are also buried here, creating a continuum of historical enemies. In addition, civilians killed during the 15 July coup attempt in 2016 are buried in a separate section next to the Edirnekapı Cemetery, adding another internal enemy - the Gülen Movement - to the official history. The physical correspondence of this mnemonical expansion is also visible in the expansion of the cemetery area, which has been gradually transfo...
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Conference Presentations by Erdem Üngür
Conference: 5th World Conference On Design And Arts – WCDAE 2016, 2016
Rem Koolhaas's 1994 text titled "Bigness" has created a discussion around the themes of autonomy,... more Rem Koolhaas's 1994 text titled "Bigness" has created a discussion around the themes of autonomy, urbanization and neoliberalism since that time. However is it still possible today to make use of this conceptual tool in order to understand and transform big buildings which are still produced in large quantities by neoliberalism? I will make a rough distinction between those who criticize the iconic architectural practice of Rem Koolhaas and those who in addition to this criticism try to recruit conceptual tools from the era of Rem Koolhaas when he was working together with Oswald Mathias Ungers in order to produce alternative projects against capitalist consumer society. In this framework I will try to open a discussion in order to use the term Bigness against its general definition as a place where neoliberalism reproduces itself. I will try to ask the following questions: Is architecture able to stay outside of the urbanization process in order to create a political space as a place of differentiation? Is it possible to produce a different program of Bigness other than shopping mall, business or residence tower? Or is it possible to transform these already existing typologies? At the heart of these questions lies a more fundamental question: Do we still have a political status in order to claim for the right to the city? And accordingly does the city still exist as a political space?
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Conference: Theory for the Sake of the Theory: ARCHTHEO '11, 2011
It’s a possible assumption that today at the most of the architectural schools the concept of spa... more It’s a possible assumption that today at the most of the architectural schools the concept of space is built as an anachronistic and quasi-homogeneous element. Especially through architectural history lessons and architectural design studios, the concept of space is being established with only traces of certain periods of the history of Western thought disregarding its complex and obscure nature. It’s also thought-provoking that in an educational system, introducing space as one of the integral parts of the discipline, there is a huge ambiguity and recklessness about the history and nature of the concept of space. It can be argued that after the intensive interest of architects to the concept of space between 1890-1970 and finally after the stabilization of the concept as a key stone of architecture, the discipline has begun to shift out of the spatial studies (excluding ‘place’ theories between 1970-1990). Although space has become the dominant paradigm particularly in social sciences with the spatial turn after 1980s, it seems like that this socio-political transition of the concept of space has not so much affected the architectural theory deep inside its epistemology. Herein it may play a role that in a Cartesian/capitalist direction matured and freezed epistemology of space of the architectural practice, which has to take part directly in the market being used by whether public or private sector as an economic/politic regulatory, is not exactly corresponding to the spatial approaches which were shifted from aesthetic to social, building critical thinking in subjects like social injustice or bio-politics and hence organizing directly or indirectly resistance against present power and political institutions. In order to trace the way how the concept of space positions itself inside the epistemology of architecture and how this position configurates the discipline, it must be asserted first that space is a historical (1980s) and spatial (Germany) early modern concept diffused into the discipline of architecture rather than being an essential part inherent to it. Therefore the concept of space in architecture has to be read as a historical phenomenon within Western history and in relation with modernity.
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Thesis by Erdem Üngür
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Books by Erdem Üngür
Beyond the Postmodern: Space and Place for the Early 21st Century, 2015
This paper will investigate the validity and consistency of the discourse created around French a... more This paper will investigate the validity and consistency of the discourse created around French anthropologist Marc Augé's concept 'non-place', considering its internal ambiguities and the contradictions arousing from different critics about the concept. Although Augé's clear and logical definition of non-place seems like a tautology, it's one of the most popular concepts in the discipline of architecture which is used as key theme in academic papers, workshops and theoric lessons related with post/super/hyper modernity, cinema, urban planning and especially with space in the general sense. The understanding and use of the concept seems mainly divided in two opposite absolute meanings. One of them positions Augé as an existentialist (in the Heideggerian sense) and a sedentarist metaphysicist advocating place against space, and the other one as a pioneer in the field of antropology breaking the authority of place and showing new possibilities of space (in a Deleuzian way) in the age of supermodernity. In addition to these, there is a research area dealing with the 'subjectivity problem' of the notion and in relation there are 'expansionists', who doesn't limit the non-places with transitional [transport, transit, commerce, leisure] spaces. This paper will try to show different oppositions and claim that the ambigious and contradictory position of Marc Augé is caused by his transitional position between postmodernity and over-modernity, by his requirements and restrictions coming from the discipline of anthropology and the related contradictory configuration of his theory. However, despite all the ambigious and contradictory character, the concept of non-place can still be used as a theoretical tool to expose and change the controlled spaces of late capitalism.
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Drafts by Erdem Üngür
Guattari'nin Architectural Enunciation metnini 2018 yılında İngilizce'den Tim Adams’ın “Architect... more Guattari'nin Architectural Enunciation metnini 2018 yılında İngilizce'den Tim Adams’ın “Architectural Enunciation” (Interstices 6, Enigma, 2005: 119-125) ve Andrew Goffey’in “Schizoanalytic cartographies” (Bloomsburry, 2013: 231-239) çevirilerini birlikte kullanarak Türkçe'ye çevirmiştim. Aradan geçen 5 yıl içerisinde hiçbir değişiklik yapamadım malesef. Yazının Deleuze&Guattari yazınına hakim biri tarafından Fransızca özgün metinle karşılaştırmalı okunması lazım.
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Book Reviews by Erdem Üngür
The Design Journal, 2024
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Papers by Erdem Üngür
Conference Presentations by Erdem Üngür
Thesis by Erdem Üngür
Books by Erdem Üngür
Drafts by Erdem Üngür
Book Reviews by Erdem Üngür