MODERN TÜRK KONUTUNUN GELİŞİM SÜRECİNDE TARİHSELCİ BİR YAKLAŞIM; SEDAD HAKKI ELDEM KONUT YAPILARI

Abstract

The most important segment of the early Republican era architecture program was housing construction, and with the declaration of the Republic, it was geared towards functional rational Bauhaus architecture in both public and residential architecture. Functionalist trends in Turkish housing architecture, which came under the influence of Bauhaus between 1930-33, turned into a residential understanding comprised of spaces shaped according to their features and functions. Nevertheless, an architectural concept advocating domestic and national architectural values also emerged during the same years as the housing concept that reflected the innovative, enlightened ideology of the Republic and its policy of breaking with the past. Sedad Hakki Eldem was the key figure in this group. Suggesting that a new style compatible with the social structure needed to be created, he emphasized that copying European styles would not suit our architectural purposes, whereby he put forward the traditional Turkish House as the reference source for national architecture at the National Architecture Seminar he launched at the Academy in 1933. With sketches and applications he implemented between 1931-33, Eldem began producing houses that attributed heavily to traditional Turkish House architecture. This article will review the manner in which Sedad Hakki Eldem interpreted the Turkish house plan type and the elements of this layout during the modernization process of the Turkish house, based on a selection of houses built in the historicist architectural style.