Formation and transformation of critical modern rural architecture: the case of the Göl Village Institute Campus in Kastamonu, Türkiye

Abstract

ABSTRACT Having emerged in the 1980s, the term 'critical regionalism' discusses the network of relations between the modern and the local by prioritizing the characteristics of the place. The ‘village institutes', which were established in the Anatolian rural landscape in the 1940s, were village teacher training schools that served the modernization movements in the Turkish rural scene and used local and traditional resources and knowledge for architecture and planning. Most of the planning and design projects for educational campuses were the result of 15 different national architectural competitions held between 1940 and 1943. This study discusses the dialectical relationship and transitions between modern planning approaches and local and rural architectural characteristics by utilizing the critical regionalist theory in the context of Göl Village Institute in Kastamonu. The spatial transformation of the institute’s campus, which is registered as cultural heritage and encapsulates a variety of values ranging from landscape to historical, cultural and architectural values, is discussed as a process that oscillates between critical regionalist approaches and building activities incompatible with the context. The study concludes that Göl Village Institute, which is hardly conserved despite its legal registration status as cultural heritage, implements unique modern planning and needs appropriate conservation interventions.