Reflections of Memory Boom on the Architectural Researches in Turkey

Abstract

Memory is a notion studied by many different disciplines with its various points of views. Researchers, who examine memory and its sub-categories, discuss this notion through interactions of people within their individual; societal; cultural; and urban contexts. It is possible to observe a considerable increase of researches on the phenomenon of memory in the last two decades. These research increase is labelled in the literature as ‘memory-boom’. The term “memory-boom” could be explained as the importance and attention given to the notion of memory in society and the academic world. An example of this ‘memory-boom’ can be seen in the increasing number of researches after the World War II and then The Holocaust. A similar rise was experienced after the 9/11 World Trade Centre attack. As a result of these incidents, which had a worldwide impact on masses, reasons behind memory-boom started to emerge in some researches. In this study, ‘memory-boom’ is discussed within the national context of Turkey. Notion of memory has been studied in many researches in Turkey, as in the literature of elsewhere. This study focuses on the rise of academic works in Turkey that examine relations between architectural buildings and memory within the field of architecture, as opposed to researches focusing solely on the concept of memory. The purposes of the study could be explained as twofold: 1) to understand reasons behind the increase of memory researches in Turkey and triggers or reasons that may be affecting these works, 2) to understand reasons of the memory-boom related to architecture and architectural buildings in Turkey. In this context, this study is constructed as a preliminary work, which has limited research universe that encompass academic dissertations in architecture and interior design disciplines, written between years of 2000-2020 in Turkey. Thesis, which are archived at the “Council of Higher Education National Thesis Center” database, are examined within the scope of this study, to be able to demonstrate the relations between architecture and memory-boom. The study has a qualitative, interpretive conceptual framework and it relies on critical readings of the existing literature as a method. It is aimed to understand notable similarities and/or differences between triggering reasons of memory-boom in Turkey and related architectural studies. The study intends to contribute to the literature by drawing attention to the notion of “memory-boom” in national literature and to expand its place in academic works and researches.