CONSERVATION

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CONSERVATION OF URBAN SPACE

AS AN ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEM (1)
Baykan GNAY

First Received: 04.08.2008; Final Text:

27.02.2009
Keywords: conservation; cultural beings;
ontology; Da-Sein; Heidegger.
1. A Turkish version of this paper was
published as Gnay, 2006.
2. The discussion on ontology was developed
to evaluate the Skyframe building in stanbul
from an ontological perspective (Gnay,
2005).

INTRODUCTION
The objects of conservation are known in the western languages by such
epistemologies as heritage, historical building, monument, site, or beauty.
Such a terminology exists in Turkish too, however, either consciously or
unconsciously, legislation in Turkey rests on the notion of natural and
cultural beings (tabiat ve kltr varlklar). In spite of such a sophisticated
definition, and that Turkey has a well developed legislation concerning
conservation; it is hard to say that the society as a whole finds the
phenomenon appropriate.
To further this argument, this paper will not concentrate on the more
popular topics of architectural heritage or inheritance, monuments,
authenticity, cultural identity, aesthetics, natural environment, or
archaeology, or their legislation, but will interrogate the place of
conservation as a form of reproduction of urban space, and an element of
the existence of the human being. While the former concept is borrowed
from both urban ecology discourse of the Chicago School and Marxist
interpretation of reproduction of urban space, the latter is considered as an
argument as to the perpetuation of the human being. It is in this framework
that conservation is based on ontology, which is defined as the theory of
being. Whether the human beings interest in its past and the environment
it is living in is just an intellectual effort or a more vital question concerning
its being shall be the concerns of the following discussion on conservation.
ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (2)
Ontology is the branch of philosophy pursuing such questions as, what is
real? What is the difference between appearance and reality? What is the
relation between minds and bodies? Are numbers and concepts real, or are
only physical objects real? (Palmer, 1994, 387). Further definitions argue
that Ontology, that is, the science of being, tries to apprehend the being

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as it is seen and observed by the individual. Being is what is seen (Hzr,

1981, 74).
Ontology is associated with Martin Heidegger for whom other beings are;
we ex-ist (Palmer, 1994, 335). He has named human existence as Da-Sein
(being there) that combines real events with meaningful interpretations and
Unlike other beings, which are in the world, Da-Sein has a world and,
knowing is just one way of being-in-the-world. Furthermore, knowing is
itself not just an intellectual act (Palmer, 1994, 336).
Everything we talk about, mean, and are related to is in being in one
way or the other. What and how we ourselves are is also in being. Being
is found in thatness and whatness, reality, the objective presence of things
(Vorhandenheit), subsistence, validity, existence (Da-Sein), and in the there
is (es gibt) (Heidegger, 1996, 5)

en (2000, 5) bases his argument on Heidegger and claims that

Cartesian thought has become outdated in the twentieth century and
ontology has totally negated it. In the Cartesian approach, the mindbody model considers out there as a projection of mind; in contrast,
the Da-Sein questions the meaning of the being. Heidegger does not
negate the dialectical link between mind and matter, however, he refers
to a being for which the there and the when make sense because
the humans awareness defines a there and a when among all other
beings (Beckman, 2000). While other beings do not have any sense of
consciousness, the human being has the ability in observing, exploring
and witnessing other beings therefore the world is what is seen and
experienced; in this regard Heidegger used the German word Da-Sein
(being-there) to indicate this feature of the human being.
On the other hand, since it is the only being which can cause the coming
into existence of other beings (3), this ability of the human being has also
produced what we today call technology, defined by Heidegger as the
highest form of rational consciousness (1973, 99). Technology is an
ordering of, or setting-upon, both nature and man, a defiant challenging
of beings that aims at total and exclusive mastery (Heidegger, 1973, 285).
Because it is expansionist, technologys attempt to enclose all beings in a
particular claim - utter availability and sheer manipulability is a process
of enframing (Ge-stell) as depicted by Heidegger which he claims, takes us
outward from ourselves. Hence, in Heideggers formulation of technology
and the process of enframing, Man assumes that this position from which
he has everything in nature ready at hand for his use makes him the master
of the earth; this causes the great danger of Enframing (Bell, 1981)
where both the nature and the cultural beings that were created in the past,
in other words the heritage, are very often excluded.

3. Recently, editors and referees of journals

of the western world warn writers not to use
sexist language since in western languages
there is gender differentiation for personal
pronouns- he, she and it, in English. In
fact we should not be obliged to obey
their conventions, since in Turkish such a
differentiation does not exist; we are all o.
Therefore it is used to represent the human
being.

Unfortunately, when man has full power in mastering both the assets of the
earth and what it has produced in the past, it begins to enframe the nature
and its own culture. This is considered a great threat to the survival of
mankind, because it leads to a feeling that everything can be touched. Since
modern technology is based on rational planning, then all resources of
the world becomes open to the control of the human being. Consequently,
instead of a world of meanings, the Da-Sein is left with a pile of functions
through which nature and its own past are continuously consumed.
It was probably Christian Norberg-Schulz, who introduced ontology
into the field of understanding architecture in the framework of
phenomenology, which is the science of qualitative interpretation. Schulz

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has applied ontological argument to architecture claiming that after

decades of abstract, scientific theory, it is urgent that we return to a
qualitative, phenomenological understanding of architecture (NorbergSchulz, 1984, 5).
Norberg-Schulz (1984, 6) has based his analysis on the concept of place,
defining it as something more than abstract location a totality made
up of concrete things having material substance, shape, texture and
colour. Then, the analysis concentrates on natural places and man-made
places. This paper is an endeavor to go beyond architecture and place.
interrogating natural beings and urban space as objects of conservation.
NATURAL BEINGS
There is a significant dialectical link between the nature as a being and
cultural beings produced by the human being. The human being, in order
to sustain itself, has to use the nature. In the recent decades however,
the human beings capacity to use the nature is generating a new arena
of dispute between the engineering sciences and the environmentalist
discourse. In the building of the urban environment, or in constructing
dams and highways or mine extraction, such processes should not simply
be reduced to the problems of the environment. We should not forget
that human intervention to the natural beings (rivers, mountains, forests
or coast-lines) too; need care in the name of the human being. When the
human being cannot be there (Da-Sein), cannot witness such beings and
cannot see that those beings are sacred as itself, then it is endangering itself.
Therefore in intervening with the nature, simple technical reasoning cannot
justify those acts.
Moreover, the mortal human being is a dweller on the earth and for
Heidegger (1975, 160) Only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can
we build.
But on the earth already means under the sky. Both of these also mean
remaining before the divinities and include a belonging to mens being
with one another. By a primal oneness the four - earth and sky, divinities
and mortals - belong together in one (Heidegger, 1975, 149).

Since the being is a dweller on the earth, life is privileged. But that
privilege becomes eclipsed when we recklessly and ego-centrically
possess and control everything we find around us (Beckman, 2000). In
evaluating interventions to the natural environment, many views are
stated considering environmental values and aesthetics, or epistemological
discourses with reference to pollution, erosion and exhaustion of natural
resources. Needless to say, those discourses have a lot of truth; however,
they cannot prevent those attitudes which tend to dominate and enframe
the nature. Our education systems and prejudices are full of entanglements
telling us that everything can be touched.
In this connection a vivid case is the Skyframe building in stanbul. The
building owes its being to its investor and architect, the planners of
the Ministry of Tourism, bureaucracy of the central and local agencies
who supported it from the points of view of ownership, bed capacity,
investment, silhouette and aesthetics. While the planners advocated it for
economic reasons, its architect claimed that the being of Skyframe was
inspired by the tower like structures of stanbul and that its verticality was
in harmony with the neighboring horizontal Takla building (Gnay,
2005, 118).

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Figure 1. The natural being of the valley of

linden trees was hurt by the existence of
Gkkafes (Gnay, 2003).

BAYKAN GNAY

Those who stood against the existence of the building applied the
well known principles of epistemology. The Skyframe would spoil the
silhouette of stanbul and the Bosphorus, would have negative effects
on the surrounding historical buildings, reduce the amount of green
areas, and generate traffic and infrastructure problems. Obviously, when
epistemological or Cartesian reasoning is used, those who defend it and
those who are in opposition with the Skyframe building use the same
categories. In the end, epistemological reasoning was not successful and the
building came into being. The author was acquainted with the Skyframe
concerning a dispute carried to the Council of State as Da-Sein. Being a
member of the expert team, he has questioned the being of the building
beside epistemological considerations (4).
In the production of Skyframe, owners of the land have attempted to
enclose all beings in a particular claim - utter availability and sheer
manipulability and enframed the nature. Planners have looked at the
subject from the point of view of bed capacity and availability of green
areas. The architects attitude focused on the horizontal-vertical duality
which he assumed already existing in the space of stanbul ((Gnay, 2005,
118). Such an entanglement has ended in alienation to the natural and
historical environment and erection of an unknown object in the heart of
the Valley of Linden Trees (Figure 1).

4. Altaban, ., Gnay, B., Trel, A., (1999)

Expert Report Submitted to the Sixth Department
of Council of State, (Dossier: 1999/6966).
5. Acar, O., Gnay, B., nal, A.,(2007) Expert
Report Submitted to the Sixth Department of
Council of State, (Dossier: 2005/7650).
6. Total length of the road is 542 km from
Samsun to the town of Hopa. Fndkl
coast comprises only a small portion in the
destruction of natural beings.

On the other hand, Heidegger (1977, 134) assumes that the fundamental
event of the modern age is the conquest of the world as picture and that
the word picture (Bild) now means the structured image (Gebild) that
is the creature of mans producing which represents and sets before.
Such a position secures, organizes, and articulates itself as a world view
(Heidegger, 1977, 134). As a result of such a world view man brings into
play his unlimited power for the calculating, planning, and molding of
all things (Heidegger 1977, 135). When these views were spoken, the
structured image was not as developed as it is today. Therefore a much
deeper danger is awaiting us, where the computer no longer encompasses
what is seen, that is the being, but its virtual image. This incidence is
causing further enframing of the human being. From such a perspective,
environmental ethics interrogating mans limits of intervention to nature

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and the human beings capacity to be there (Da-Sein) are very important in
questioning the societys world view to the processes of conservation.

Figure 2. Fndkl Coast - Calmness (Photo

submitted to the Sixth Department of
Council of State - Dossier: 2005/7650).

A more recent case in terms of mans enframing of nature is the so called

Black Sea Coastal Road (Karadeniz Sahil Yolu). Objection to that portion
of the road passing through the town of Fndkl was carried again to
the Council of State. Being a member of the expert team (5), the author
has observed the engineers approach which caused the termination of a
shore-line of thirteen kilometers with very unique beach formations (6).
Moreover, beach formation in a segment of the coast was a registered
natural site by the decision of Trabzon Council of Protection of Cultural
and Natural Beings dating 28.07.2002 / 4515.
The Turkish society has very lately become aware of its natural and
cultural beings, losing a lot until then. The Black Sea region is made up of
highlands covered with forests and a variety of green covers, rivers and
valleys from the mountains to the sea. The sea is sometimes calm and quite
often angry (Figure 2, 3) making the shoreline a being to be protected.

Figure 3. Fndkl Coast - Anger (Photo

submitted to the Sixth Department of
Council of State - Dossier: 2005/7650).

Thanks to this character of the Black Sea, settlements along the coast
have located themselves not right on the shore, but with a distance to it.
Ontologically this attitude has proved to be true for the dwellers of those
settlements which were there, witnessing the basic features of the Black
Sea. As a part of the 542 kilometer Black Sea coastal road, the sea fronting
Fndkl settlement was filled for the expressway. There was an alternative
that might be built inland on the south of the settlement, which required
three tunnels. The engineers claimed that this would cost three times as
much the landfill alternative; a typical process of enframing. The Cartesian
mind considered the problem as that of cost comparison. It did not perceive
that the sea and its shoreline were beings, just like the human being; primal
oneness of the four - earth and sky, divinities and mortals.
Parallel to the enframing by the engineering outlook, the Trabzon
Council of Protection of Cultural and Natural Beings cancelled their
previous decision to protect, with a new decision dating 22.08.2005 / 388.
Eventually they filled the sea to destroy the shoreline of the Black Sea that
is sometimes calm and sometimes angry - a being like the human being
(Figure 4).

Figure 4. Termination of Fndkl shore after

the construction of the Black Sea coastal road
(Gnay, 2007)

Referring to Heidegger, Beckman (2000) criticizes such engineering

attitudes, and claims that many engineers do not listen. It is not that they
do not listen to the environmentalists, but that, as a being whose very

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7. Boyer (1994) prefers to use preservation.

Since at the Middle East Technical University
conservation is more extensively used, the
author has also preferred conservation.

BAYKAN GNAY

essence is to-be-there, to witness the whole of what is, the engineer fails
in that essential task of human fulfillment. The engineer fails to see that
the seashore (in the original text, the river), as well as himself is sacred
and deserves to be heard. In the case of the expressway that has totally
destroyed the shore (Figure 4), we should suggest them that the way of
the future lies in thinking poetically about this project rather than thinking
of it from a merely technical perspective (Beckman, 2000).
CULTURAL BEINGS
Besides a being among beings, or rather witnessing and being aware of
other beings, it should also be explicated that human being is the only
being with capacity to produce other beings. Thus a huge accumulation
of human production has been brought into being which the author calls
cultural products or beings. On the other hand, ontologically, the two
main points which make the human being different than other beings are
being there and being conscious of time. Human awareness of time is
determinant in sustaining its being. That is why, it can write its history
and search for its past. The conservation of cultural beings produced by
the human being should be considered in the same framework where their
sustainability is as essential as the nature.
For all individuals time is not a section but a totality of sections. If time
is considered as a mass, the human beings carry with them their more
substantial past rather than their limited future as Da-Sein (being there).
Both the individuals and the societys memories identify themselves
with places (there and when) and thus the subjects and the objects of
conservation begin to evolve. Aldo Rossi (1992, 130) claims: One can say
that the city is the collective memory of its people, and like memory it is
associated with objects and places. The city is the locus of the collective
memory.
Associating conservation (7) with Rossis collective memory, Boyer (1994,
7) argues that we have reduced the concept to that of public space: In the
City of Collective Memory, we are interested particularly in the creation of
meaningful and imaginative public spaces. Contrary to such an outlook,
our approach to The public realm of the City of Collective Memory should
entail a continuous urban topography, a spatial structure that covers both
rich and poor places, honorific and humble monuments, permanent and
ephemeral forms, and should include places for public assemblage and
public debate, as well as private memory walks and personal retreats
(Boyer, 1994, 7). The author has furthered the argument on memory linking
it with lived experience, because otherwise it would be reduced to
history, becoming abstract or intellectualized reconstructions, debased or
faked recollections (Boyer, 1994, 26).
Whether it is the natural and man-made places of Norberg-Schulz, or
collective memory of Rossi associated with objects and places, or all
inclusive spatial structure of Boyer, they are all cultural beings produced
by the human being. It is this attribute of the products of the human being
which for generations has built up the basis of conserved beings of culture.
ROOTS: REPLACEMENT OR CONSERVATION
Some argue that settlements are the highest cultural products of the human
being. They continuously contain beings of the past together with beings

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of their time, ready to contain beings of the future. In this framework,

dynamics of the economic structure and ever evolving activities, further
highlighted by the mobility of social classes turns the city into an arena
of conflicts. Under these circumstances the city produces and reproduces
itself. Consequently there has always been a need for some kind of action
by the related public agencies with reference to the regeneration or
reproduction or transformation of the urban environment. While some
of those actions will rely on the conservation of the urban setting, some
will tend to totally replace the existing sometimes dilapidated, sometimes
dysfunctional or sometimes out of date building stock and urban fabric.
Very often speculative pressures will be effective in the replacement of
cultural beings.
Needless to say, historically policies relating to both extremities were used
in the reproduction of urban space. The famous burning of Rome on the
night of July 18 (or 19) in AD 64 might be considered as a significant event
where a portion of Rome was totally terminated as a part of systematic
slum clearance projects (Mumford, 1966, 255). Otherwise, in spite of the
effects of time or natural hazards or wars, a huge collection of cultural
beings have survived since the emergence of the human being.
Boyer (1994, 384) has claimed that the roots of todays conservation
policies go back to the 19th century in Europe and attracts attention to
aesthetic conventions as representations of the images of cities in the
traditional, modern, and contemporary time periods since then; naming
those conventions as the City as a Work of Art, the City as Panorama,
and the City of Spectacle (Boyer, 1994, 32). As a result there has evolved
a significant difference between European and American approaches to
conservation in the twentieth century (Boyer, 1994, 384):
Whereas the European process of safeguarding its architectural heritage
tended to cross over and to join the path of city planning, the American
development of preservation planning remained in its infancy, often held
hostage by private property and development rights. Preservation activity,
supported and implemented through regulatory controls, tax incentives,
and city plans was a relatively new field for public policy in American cities
during the 1970s and 1980s.

In the modern city, the roots of replacement or conservation are to be

sought not only in effects of time or natural hazards or wars, but in
very rapidly evolving urban processes. Attempting to explain those
processes, the urban ecology approach of the Chicago school of sociology
has considered the city as a living organism and studied processes of
generation and regeneration of the urban environment from such a
perspective. Accordingly the cities are organisms living various processes.
One of such processes depends on centralization and decentralization.
For Chapin (1965, 25), centralization usually refers to the congregation of
people and urban functions in a particular urban center or its functional
use areas in the pursuit of certain economic, cultural, or social satisfactions
against decentralization which, generally refers to the breaking down of
the urban center with the accompanying ebb movements of people and
urban functions to fringe areas (Chapin, 1965, 26). When thresholds are
encountered in the fringe such functions or social groups may tend to
centralize back in the city center.
When the city is developing towards the fringe, another set of processes
takes place called invasion and succession. While invasion is the
interpenetration of one population group or use area by another, the

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difference between the new and old being economic, social, or cultural,
succession occurs when the new population group or use types finally
displace the former occupants or uses of the area (Chapin, 1965, 27). In the
process of succession, the once prestigious areas of the city might encounter
problems of dilapidation, whereby buildings with historical value, that is,
beings as subjects of conservation begin to decay. Later when centralization
processes (back to the city) begin to govern in the central areas; either old
buildings are replaced because of higher urban rents, or as subjects of
conservation, they are invaded again turning into beings to be restored.
The urban ecology approach, to understand the internal structure of,
especially the capitalist cities of the western world regarded it as an
organism. Marxist thinkers, on the other hand, believe that the city is an
arena of conflict and that the city is produced and reproduced through
interventions by the classes and the state (Lefebvre, 1994). In the 1970s,
especially with the comments of Castells (1977) and Harvey (1985), it
was argued that the city was the outcome of historical processes (Marxist
historical materialism), capital accumulation (economic basis), and class
struggle between labor and capital (dialectical materialism). In any case,
the author believes that both views complement, rather than being in
contradiction with each other. The urban ecology approach has studied
the effects of transformation processes, whereas Marxists searched for the
causes of those evolutions.
Consequently, in the modern city, a reinterpretation of the past is being
made. It is no longer aesthetic conventions only, but very recent past
with rich and poor places, honorific and humble monuments, permanent
and ephemeral forms, ... as well as private memory walks and personal
retreats (Boyer, 1994, 7). This is an outcome of urban processes which
might very easily cause the replacement of lived experiences of the human
beings.
In spite of harsh criticism against the modern architects of the twentieth
century as neglecting the historical heritage, the Athens Charter of CIAM
(8) held in Athens in 1933, in fact defined the fundamentals of conservation
(Ekistics, 1963):

8. CIAM (Congrs Internationaux

dArchitecture Moderne) is a set of congresses
held in the first half of the 20th century
by famous architects and city planners.
Developing, what is called the modern
principles of architecture and the city, the
CIAM has perceived form as an expression
of function. The 1933 congress in Athens
ended with a set of principles to be called
the Athens Charter. The Charter was
criticized later for simplifying the city with
only four functions - dwelling, recreation,
work, transportation and historical heritage
taken into consideration with the insistence
of the Italian group (Gnay,1988).

65. Fine architecture, individual buildings or groups of buildings, should be

protected from demolition.
66. The grounds for the preservation of buildings should be that they express
an earlier culture and that their retention is in the public interest.
67. But their preservation should not entail that people are obliged to live in
insalubrious conditions.
69. The demolition of slums surrounding historic monuments provides an
opportunity to create new open spaces.
70. The re-use of past styles of building for new structures in historic areas
under the pretext of aesthetics has disastrous consequences.

What the Charter neglected is not historical beings (earlier culture), but
beings of near past defined as slums. In any case, later, the UNESCO would
describe international principles of archaeological excavations in 1956
(Recommendation of International Principles Applicable to Archaeological
Excavations; Madran and zgnl, 1999). In 1962, proposals were laid
down concerning the safeguarding of the beauty and character of
landscapes and sites (Madran and zgnl, 1999). In the second ICOMOS
meeting held in Venice in 1964, the Venice Charter (The International
Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites;

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9. For a compilation of international charters

on conservation, see, Madran and zgnl,
1999.

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Madran and zgnl, 1999) widened the content of historical monuments

to cover anything that represented any event concerning the past.
The Venice Charter also stipulated that historical monuments should
not be restricted to single buildings, but should embrace all civilizations
leaving traces in both the cities and the countryside and significant
historical events. Eventually, not only high works of art, but modest objects
of significance should also become subjects of conservation. Later the
Venice Charter would become the main source of conservation legislation,
depicting principles of conservation, restoration, historic sites and
excavations (9).
The features and amount of objects to be conserved changed in time to
cover underwater natural and cultural elements, war fields, industrial
heritage and even objects of the modern world that has led to the
development of a very extensive legislation.
In Turkey the first enactments for preservation appeared in the 19th
century with Regulations Concerning Old Monuments. In the modern
times the 1973 Law on Old Monuments was preceded by the 1983 Law on
the Conservation of Cultural and Natural Beings. The law provoked the
development of a substantial legislation further supported by National
Parks and Environment, and international charters further enlarged the
content of conservation (Madran, 2000). It is already stated that the Turkish
legislation considers objects of conservation as beings. But parallel to
what Boyer (1994, 384) has complained for the American experience, The
architect, the historian, the real estate entrepreneur, the conservator, the
planner, and the community resident all held separate, even conflicting
expectations of preservation programs in Turkey too.
In the modern age, the cities of the world have been undergoing profound
reproduction processes and many of those practices endorsed replacement
rather than conservation. Except for the monumental buildings,
conservation has always been subdued against demolishment and
rebuild. It is only in the last two centuries that conservation has become
an issue in the life span of the human being. As insisted in this paper, the
process of conservation has not emerged, simply as a product of the age
of enlightenment depending on epistemology, but its quest for being
there. In all processes of reproduction of the urban environment, although
many things concerning its being were demolished, things have never
been totally annihilated. This is due to the fact that the human being has
always asked questions concerning time and being there. Considering this
attribute of the human being, the following discussion will scrutinize the
Turkish experience towards the reproduction of urban space with emphasis
on processes of conservation and protection of cultural beings.
RENEWAL, REDEVELOPMENT AND CLEARANCE
In the regeneration or reproduction or transformation of the urban
environment, policies concerning renewal, redevelopment and clearance
have always concentrated on total removal of the existing urban fabric.
As a result of such policies, ownership patterns have transformed causing
displacement of the dwellers as well. In England for instance, the town
and country planning acts of 1930s turned their focus to slum clearance
in England, and for Ravetz, (1986, 30) this enabled large cities to clear
some of their worst central slums and build modern flats on the sites.
Hence clearance was followed by the redevelopment of those sites for new
dwellers.

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Figure 5. Termination of traditional fabric in

nye (Gnay, 2006).
Figure 6. Termination of cultural beings
of the Republican era in Kzlay, Ankara
(Gnay, 1990).

BAYKAN GNAY

In the United States of America, argues Hall (1989, 279) that the
fashionable buzzwords of the late 1950s and early 1960s were
comprehensive renewal, systems analysis in planning, and integrated land
use - transportation planning. Under the circumstances planning became
highly quantitative with the aid of computer-based techniques imported
from the transportation engineers. Hall explains this typical enframing of
the planning profession where everything could be measured in terms
of time and money, and against equity and intangibles which would be
causing the destruction of old neighborhoods for new freeways and new
commercial development; and all this was not merely inevitable; it came
to have a scientific validity (Hall, 1989, 279).
The renewal processes depending first on clearance and then
redevelopment policies very soon appeared in Turkish urbanization
too. Until 1950s, the Turkish city is cautious to the existing urban fabric.
Consciously or not, the inherited cultural environment is protected. Since
the republican administration gave its energy to the production of the new
city, the traditional city remained untouched. This attitude however, would
be deserted later with rapid urbanization and what is called the tear down
build process would start to dominate the Turkish city, where both the
traditional cultural beings (Figure 5) and the created republican city would
be substantially terminated (Figure 6).
Renewal is a process which covers mainly the demolishment of existing
urban fabric for the construction of new road systems and buildings. In the
western world, renewal policies aimed at recovering declining rent and tax
values mainly in the dilapidated central areas. Although the concept was
used in explaining the physical transformation of cities, it has fallen short
in clarifying transformation of urban activity pattern.
In Turkey, basic method of renewal has always relied on increasing
densities through readjusting building rights. The three actors of the
urban arena, property owners, small capital construction companies and
buyers with limited savings, have created the conditions for such a process
causing the demolishment of urban areas in short spans of time. In the
ontological argument, Only if we are capable of dwelling, only then
can we build (Heidegger 1975, 160). As a result of prevailing renewal
processes, the Turkish city has not been able to create the conditions of
the place community. Place making is a highly debated paradigm of the
urban environment. It requires, however, the existence of there-beings, a
condition which Turkish renewal policies failed to achieve.

CONSERVATION AS AN ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEM

10. The author has had his circumcision

ceremony at Esenpark (the breezing park)
and had the opportunity to listen to singers
Karabcek sisters who were than children
too. The park has been demolished for the
construction of the municipality building.

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Injection of new functions in dilapidated or unproductive zones of the city

is a frequently applied method which entails, first the clearance and than
the redevelopment of such sites. As debated earlier Neros fire in Rome is
one example of such policies. Creation of the modern European city in the
19th century owes much to clearance and redevelopment of mainly central
areas which were not appropriate for the development of new functions of
the capitalist system. Although the most talked about case is Haussmans
Paris, almost all large cities of Europe have undergone the process of
clearance and redevelopment. Towards the 19th century, it is no more the
simple merchant controlling the economy of the cities, but a huge sector
of businessmen doing overseas trade, banking, brokerage, etc., who are
competing for space in the central areas of the cities. To do this, the power
of the central state is used. The consequent benefits go to this commercial
capital trying to dominate the central area and the real property
developers, who are by then growing as a new and powerful group.
Such policies appeared in the first half of the 20th century tending to
totally change the general layout of an area by rearrangement of property
boundaries, buildings and roads; because the area to be redeveloped can
no more provide opportunities for sound economic activity or satisfactory
living conditions. Since besides the removal of existing physical structure
this mode of urban reproduction entailed the re-use of cleared land, it
became a major tool for central and local administrations to also regain
declining property taxes. Because it caused total removal of existing fabric
and life patterns, it would later be harshly criticized when new ideas
developed concerning cultural heritage, memory and identity of urban
areas by the human beings who would resist enframing of their selves.
The tool has widely been used through the State apparatus in Turkey, for
the building of governmental structures too. A well-known example is
the Altnda municipality building in Ankara. The Altnda municipality
building (Figure 7) has caused the termination of Esenpark (10; the
breezing park is a being), at a strategic location providing for a visual
relation between the old and new towns. When the park was being
developed for construction, enframed ideology has disregarded collective
memory of those who have been there.

Figure 7. Altnda Municipality building in

Ankara terminated the Breezing Park (Gnay,
2006)

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Figure 8. In nye traditional values were not

able to protect their being (Gnay, 2006).
Figure 9. In Samsun conservation of
traditional values are reduced to single
beings (Gnay, 2006).

BAYKAN GNAY

PRESERVATION, CONSERVATION AND PROTECTION

In the reproduction of cities the Da-Seins desire to sustain itself has
been playing a determining role. Policies concerning the preservation,
conservation and protection of cultural beings are refined applications
always associated with restoration skills. Such acts emerged especially
in historical parts of cities. Preservation of buildings and urban fabric
displaying architectural quality or basic characteristics of specific epochs
have called for policies of strict conservation measures. Search for original
architectural and urban elements, keeping them as cultural heritage
necessitates restoration actions rather than renewal of physical stock. More
truly, when history became an asset conservation became a popular issue.
The ontological argument has claimed that the human being is the only
being who is conscious of itself asking when, where and how as to its
being. In this respect, Habermas (1992, 17) has claimed that conservation is
a very fundamental policy, a Renaissance of the European bourgeoisie to
revitalize its past.
The traces of the occidental city that Max Weber described, the city of the
European bourgeoisie in the High Middle ages or the urban nobility in
Renaissance Upper Italy, the princely Rezidenz city restored by the Baroque
master builders - these historical traces have blended in our minds into a
diffused and many-layered concept of the city.
Today, underneath the European Community lies its past and the members
of the community are very particular in sustaining their being through
the cultural beings in their cities. Consequently, they have been seeing
conservation as a basic tool of the being to interrogate when and how their
being emerged and evolved. For this end, substantial state expenditures
contributed to the preservation of cultural and historical heritage, or in
ontological terms, beings.
Since the foundation of the republic, the Turkish city has been living
similar processes. In the development of the modern city, the planning
ideology did not intervene with the traditional parts of the city. The
idea was to produce a new human being and its space. The resulting
approach was to keep the old citys being, and support it with new
urban development that would reflect the modernist ideology of the new
republic. The policy proved its success and until 1950s, the beings of the
traditional city survived and newer parts of the city developed as a creation

CONSERVATION AS AN ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEM

11. Passive conservation refers to simply

enlisting of cultural beings without any other
intervention.

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of the new regime. The human being, aware of all other beings consciously
produced the city of the modern age, in conformity with its past.
The process continued until 1950s. Afterwards, the rules of the urban
ecology theory began to govern where the traditional center started
to break down causing the interpenetration of newcomers to the city
invading the traditional fabric. In cities where development was faster, the
traditional city was not able to protect its being owing to increasing land
values (Figure 8, 9). The result was extensive destruction of their cultural
beings.
Beginning from 1970s, Turkey has achieved substantial development
in tourism. Besides the natural beings it possessed, tourism made
considerable contribution to the sustaining of the cultural beings in many
towns. Eventually, while those enframed cities not protecting their cultural
beings were not able to collect the benefits of tourism activity, cities
keeping their traditional fabric have taken hold of excellent opportunities.
Conservation either requires capital, for which the being has a rent value,
or the Da-Sein for whom the being has an ontological value. In Safranbolu,
the State volunteered in the conservation and revitalization of the
traditional urban environment causing gentrification, because of ascending
property values (Figure 10).
In cities like Beypazar on the other hand, local initiative, as there
beings, have become conscious as to the income producing capacity of
their traditional environment to sustain them. Being is what is seen and
the human being has the capacity to transform real things or events to
meaningful interpretations. The Da-Sein has a world to comment on other
beings in the world. The dwellers of Beypazar have become aware of
their environment not through abstraction, but through experiencing and
perceiving it as a living organism (Figure 11).
REHABILITATION AND REVITALIZATION

Figure 10. The cultural beings in Safranbolu

are invaded by capital from larger cities of
Turkey (Gnay, 2005).
Figure 11. In Beypazar local initiative
became aware of their cultural beings
(Gnay, 2006).

Conservation by itself cannot guarantee the continued existence of beings.

As far as passive conservation is concerned (11), though sometimes there
are physical improvements and restoration applications, revitalization of
that environment may not be maintained. In this framework, rehabilitation,
revitalization and improvement have emerged as modest policies where

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Figure 12. In Antalya the subsistence of the

site is initiated by the State, maintained the
new there-beings (Gnay, 1991).

existing ownership patterns and those beings that are there are protected
too.
Rehabilitation is applicable in areas in which there is loss of original
function and haphazard growth of physical stock, creating unhealthy and
dense environments. The basic idea is removal of buildings causing general
deterioration of the environment, correction of conditions having adverse
affects on land use in the area and provision of infrastructure. The physical
stock may be renewed, but original character of the fabric and a sound
activity system are the basic objectives of rehabilitation.
Changes in the activity structure of towns cause dominance of new
locations and degradation of previous dominant areas. In this framework,
in order to upgrade such areas, revitalization policies at the city scale
may be put into force, to inject new functions and activities to stimulate
reproduction of urban areas. In the reproduction of urban space,
Gottdiener (1988, 64) claims that the process is a social product subsidized
by the state, rather than some magical, organic initiative of place.
Although there is truth in this argument, it cannot answer the success
of such policies in different practices. In the case of the Antalya Citadel,
revitalization was achieved in spite of gentrification of the area (Figure
12). The author believes that gentrification is also a process of being there.
Hence, it should also be said that in the Citadel the gentrified population
were not the original dwellers of the site; they were not aware of the site,
but alien to it. After gentrification, a new group of dwellers begins to be
there, with a different awareness.
Similarly, the Beyolu district which evolved as the commercial and
residential quarter of the new bourgeoisie of minority groups in Istanbul
has declined in the 1950s because the original dwellers left the site. Parallel
to Gottdieners (1988, 64) argument, public agencies have intervened to
rehabilitate and revitalize the district. At present a part of the area with a
rich collection of cultural beings has transformed into a meaningful site for
a vast majority of human beings who visit it for the sake of being there, just
to experience it (Figure 13).

CONSERVATION AS AN ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEM

Figure 13. A vast majority of human beings

visit Beyolu for the sake of being there
(Gnay, 2005).
Figure 14. Germiyan street in Ktahya; the
buildings were conserved and restored as
cultural beings; however, the street could not
revitalize itself (Gnay, 2004).

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In certain other instances, there may be social products subsidized by the

state, but not inhabited by dwellers. In any case no public agency would
allocate any fund if it were not for the organic initiative of place. It is true
that place is the production of the traditional society when it was a product
of the Da-Sein. The modern age, on the other hand, promises adventure,
power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world - and at
the same time ... threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we
know, everything we are (Berman cited in Hill, 2002, 57).
Therefore argues Hill (2002, 57) in modernity long term relation with
a physical place is severed and that technology unbinds us from any
dependence on a particular location. Hills outlook goes back to Wirths
seminal study -Urbanism as a Way of Life (1967, 57)
Place of residence, place and character of employment, income and
interests fluctuate, and the task of holding organizations together and
maintaining and promoting intimate and lasting acquaintanceship between
the members is difficult... Overwhelmingly the city-dweller is not a homeowner, and since a transitory habitat does not generate binding traditions
and sentiments, only rarely is he truly a neighbor.

Hence the meaning of place has changed. Rather than one place, the
human being survives in a multitude of places and place is no longer an
actuality, but an image of the human being. A good case in this regard is
Germiyan Street in Ktahya (Figure 14). The state has subsidized it as a
social product. The buildings were conserved and restored. In spite of all
those efforts however, the street could not revitalize itself and remains as
an image. The technocracy of the state was there, being aware of the place;
but the dwellers still are not there.
IMPROVEMENT AND RECOVERY
This study is attempting to differentiate actions regarding the reproduction
of urban space. Although the emphasis is on conservation, it is also a fact
that the existing urban fabric with its buildings and circulation network is
not homogenous, often requiring the enactment of different processes.

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Figure 15. Augustus Temple (BC 30-AD 14)

and Hac Bayram Mosque (AD 1427-1428)
have survived as one assembly (Gnay,
1982).

Sometimes an urban area preserves its functional configuration but there

is dilapidation in some parts of the physical stock and infrastructure, or
a need to supply community facilities. In this case, improvement policies
might be put into action together with new management systems to
reproduce such urban areas and to provide for the continuation of existing
functions to recover the site. To improve any site, a collection of policies
depicted in the preceding discussion may be put into force. One of such
attempts was Ulus Historical Centre Conservation and Improvement Study
in Ankara to recover the old centre that was declining (12).
What made Ulus significant for the dwellers of Ankara is manifold. The
city has lived the rule of Hittites, Phrygians, Lydians and Galatians until
the domination of Rome. The citadel is probably a product of the Hittites.
The erection of the Temple of Emperor Augustus dates back to BC 30
- AD 14 in reign of Rome. The following rulers were Byzantines and the
Seljuks (Ahi Princedom). It was during the Ottoman rule that Hac Bayram
Mosque was erected circa AD 1427-28 next to the temple. Since than these
two beings have survived as one assembly; with Heideggers logic, by a
primal oneness the four -earth and sky, divinities and mortals (1975, 149),
they belonged together in one (Figure 15). The Da-Sein who is aware of
time and other beings has respected the being produced by the previous
Da-Sein.
Moreover, Ulus has also witnessed the foundation of the Turkish Republic.
The Ulus Historical Centre Conservation and Improvement Study was an
integrated project encompassing all the approaches referred to previously.
Parts of the large site would be subjected to clearance, redevelopment,
renewal, conservation, etc. The main goal was to provide for the survival
of the historical centre and carry the multitude of beings built in different
time sections into the future, including the beings of the modern age.
12. The project was coordinated by late
Raci Bademli with the participation of
a substantial number of instructors and
students in the Faculty of Architecture at the
Middle East Technical University.

The plans name also implied this attitude -conservation and improvement.
In order to improve and revitalize the site, conservation was not limited to
past history, but covered recent history as well. In the last decade, however,
a new ideology is recklessly and egocentrically leading to the destruction of
the site. Instead of technology, this time cultural beings are terminated with

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a claim that the existing beings are old and should be replaced by their
imitations. Hence rather then keeping them, the administration attempts
to replace their being. This is a new process of enframing, where the
being itself no more exists (Figure 16). In the case of Hacbayram district,
traditional houses have not been taken care of, to be left alone. In stead
their distorted image are being constructed.
IRONY OF IMPROVEMENT: SQUATTER IMPROVEMENT
PRACTICES
Squatting refers to the act of inhabiting buildings or land without owning
them. In law, this is the act of possession. Both Roman and Common law
systems attribute the same meaning to possession. It is the actual control
over a thing. Norberg-Schulz (1980) claims that architecture is the spatial
foothold of man, where dwelling is the basic element of its existence.
This corollary is truer for the dwellers of squatters as possessors of their
dwellings.

Figure 16. The cultural beings of Hac

Bayram district are being recklessly
destructed; Hacbayram district as seen in
1990s and the present day clearly reflects the
loss of traditional houses (Gnay, 1991, and
2008).

Beginning in the 1950s urbanization of the third world countries all ended
up in squatting of lands near metropolitan centers. In Turkey, the illicit
house built on either public land or private property in the form of shared
ownership found its name as gecekondu meaning built overnight.
Created under the conditions of actual enjoyment of their land and
buildings, as there-beings, the squatter population produced their urban

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Figure 17. Beings that have been terminated

for the sake of new beings at the skirts of the
Citadel in Ankara (Gnay, 2007).

space with their own urban fabric and architecture. The urban environment
produced carried the same characteristics of the rural settlements from
which the dwellers of gecekondu came - low-rise low-density city with
greenery and the sun. This is a very natural behavior of the human being.
The typical squatter inhabitant was a mortal human being who was
striving to dwell on the earth, and to repeat Heidegger (1975, 160), Only
if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build.
Lately, this city of dwellers where they possessed their home, is
transforming into a regular city depending on ownership and byelaw
buildings, through what is called Improvement (Islah yiletirme) plans,
which rather than improving, totally clear away and replace the squatters.
Thus the use of the term rehabilitation has acquired a new meaning in
the Turkish planning context. Ironically, the process of replacing squatter
areas with their buildings and fabric was called improvement. As already
mentioned, improvement holds a variety of processes for the subsistence of
the dilapidating parts of a city. You may need to clear, redevelop, conserve,
restore, to rehabilitate and revitalize the being of that environment. In the
case of squatters, improvement plans have enframed, to totally terminate
their being (Figure 17).
In fact they were on the earth which also meant under the sky. What is
replacing them is far away from being there. The enframed Da-Sein has
applied Cartesian approaches based on functionalism and rationalism in
stead of a world of meanings. This act is wiping out both the nature and
the Da-Seins own products. Under these circumstances, some scholars
have seriously proposed that portions of squatter clusters may become
subjects of conservation to represent their being in the course of the history
of housing in Turkey; to also interrogate pseudo-improvement planning
practices from the perspective of environmental ethics.

Figure 18. Mies van der Rohes Barcelona

Pavilion was rebuilt as part of cultural
heritage (www.bluffton.edu/.../barcelona/
mies/rthalf2.jpg, retrieved July 2008).

In spite of a vast literature on squatting, studying its causes, the social and
economic background of its dwellers or physical conditions that are often
associated with poverty, the fact that they were producing urban space
on earth remained unnoticed. Whether we can praise illicitly produced
squatters is also a problem requiring scrutiny. In any case, squatter

CONSERVATION AS AN ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEM

13. Weissenhofsiedlung architects comprised

Mies van der Rohe, J.J.P. Oud, Victor
Bourgeois, Adolf G. Schnek, Le Corbusier
with Pierre Jeanneret, Walter Gropius,
Ludwig Hilberseimer, Bruno Taut, Hans
Poelzig, Richard Dcker, Max Taut, Adolf
Rading, Josef Frank, Mart Stam, Peter
Behrens and Hans Scharoun.
14. http://www.weissenhof2002.de/english/
aktuelles.html; (retrieved August 2008).

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improvement plans have created new buildings, but not spaces of dwelling
for the there-being.
BEINGS OF THE MODERN AS OBJECTS OF CONSERVATION
What was called the modern in early 20th century is already past.
Considered a revolution in the 1920 and 30s, the products of the period
were harshly criticized beginning from 1970s. Soon after the 1980s, the
human beings awareness of time and beings, that is its ontological
conscience, was activated and works of the modern happened to turn into
historic beings.
The Villa Savoye in Poissy was built by Le Corbusier between 1928 and
1931. It is known that the owners of the villa attempted to sue Corbusier in
the court claiming that its roof leaked. In spite of this, on 16 December 1965
the building was made a Historic Monument and in 1967 control over
the Villa Savoye was given definitively to the Ministry of Cultural Affairs
(Murphy, 79, 2002), because it was considered as one of the masterpieces
of 20th century architecture.
In the case of the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, when built in 1927,
it was an exhibition of modern architecture (13). The founders had all
displayed their skills under the leadership of Mies van der Rohe. In
the 75th anniversary of Weissenhofsiedlung, 2002 was termed Year
of Weissenhof. More recently important steps were taken to ensure a
permanent and appropriate place of Weissenhofsiedlung as part of the
cultural heritage of this city. Consequently the buildings of Werkbund
Estate of 1927 [were] entered into the Register for Historical Monuments as
cultural heritage of significant importance (14).
In the mentioned cases, the subjects of preservation were still surviving.
The Barcelona Pavilion, more truly the German Pavilion in Barcelona,
for which Mies van der Rohe had designed the Barcelona chair too, was
dismantled after the exhibition. Later, a replica of the structure was built in
1986 (Figure 18). In spite of the debate between those who applauded the
building as a rebirth, some complained that its black and white memories
were lost. In any case the Da-Sein has made an ontological decision as
argued by Newton (2005, 72):
As a museum artifact, the reconstructed pavilion helps our understanding
of the original Barcelona Pavilion as part of our cultural heritage. In parallel,
the reconstructed pavilion can also be viewed as a stage set, a flawed
interpretation, a heritage reconstruction and an ethereal homage to the
original design.

The Turkish practice of conservation is yet indifferent to the cultural beings

of the modern age that also represent the foundations of the republic. After
the proclamation of the Republic, disputes have immediately arisen with
reference to architectural styles where two ideologies clashed. While one
of the ideologies based their design strategy on the international style, the
other concentrated on more neo-classical or what is called nationalistic
architecture.
A dramatic case in Ankara is the Opera building. Originally designed as
an exhibition-house by evki Balmumcu (1934), the building displayed a
modernist line along Soviet constructivism (Balamir, 2003). Very soon,
the building would be converted to an Opera building by Paul Bonatz
(1948). Balamir (2003) conveys her sadness that this conversion has taken
the building outward from its revolutionary identity with the addition of

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neoclassical images of colonnade and ornamentation to replace the original

beings tower and black and white image (Figure 19).
REAPPROPRIATION
Lefebvre used the term reappropriation for the redevelopment of the
Halles Centrales, the former wholesale market in Paris into a gatheringplace for the youth (1969-71). Lefebvre (1994, 167) justifies this project
by saying that, An existing space may outlive its original purpose and
the raison dtre which determines its forms, functions, and structures; it
may thus in a sense become vacant, and susceptible of being diverted, re
appropriated and put to a use quite different from its initial one.

Figure 19. The Exhibition house was

conveyed to the Opera building, where
neoclassical images of colonnade and
ornamentation replaced the modernist
tower and black and white image (Ankara
niversitesi, 2007; animated by the author,
2004).

Figure 20. Ankara Hippodrome was a symbol

of the Republic serving its there-beings
(Ankara niversitesi, 2007; Kale, 1990).

In this discussion, Lefebvre distinguishes the act of appropriation from

diversion which is a deviation from the original purpose. Therefore, since
the project entailed transformation of use, rather then sustaining the old
structure, we should criticize Lefebvre from the ontological perspective.
It is true that Les Halles has become a cultural district dedicated to
information, housing, and the tourist industry, surrounded by antique
shops, art galleries, artists studios, libraries, cafes, and restaurants
(Boyer (1994, 53). In doing so, however, authorities have terminated the
existing structure of Les Halles, where the enframed human being has
used its power to touch and manipulate a cultural being in the name of
cultural uses. Consequently the historic market sheds, in spite of a huge
public outcry, were demolished in 1971, and in their place spread a great
subterranean forum of shops, cinemas, parking lots, and metro stops
(Boyer, 1994, 53).
A similar practice was carried out with reference to the space of the
Hippodrome in Ankara. The Hippodrome was very purposefully located
as a part of open space system of the city and to provide for a visual contact
with the Citadel (the crown of the city). The space was designed by Italian
architect Paolo Violi Vietti. Witnessing Atatrks tenth anniversary (of the
foundation of the Republic) speech concentrating on the economic, social
and cultural achievements of the new nation, and symbolizing the Derby
held in his name (Gazi Race) until 1968 (Figure 20). The space turned into a
cultural being where Republican and Victory day ceremonies are still held.

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Figure 21. Since the termination of the

being of Ankara Hippodrome in 1968, it has
not been reappropriated by the citizens of
Ankara (Gnay, 2006).

Very unfortunately however, the social democrat ideology of the 1970s

has terminated the being of Ankara Hippodrome in the name of populism,
claiming to convert the use (hippodrome) to house cultural functions
(diversion), because they thought the horse races held there clashed with
the aspirations of the people of the city, considering horse-racing as an
entertainment for the privileged classes. This was a typical enframed
ideology that forgot that the Hippodrome was dwelling under the same
sky with the crown of the city and that the spectators of the races were
dwellers of the same space.
To wipe away the being of the Hippodrome, it was called the Atatrk
Cultural Center on which a pyramidal structure was constructed which
further destroyed the space as a being. Since the 1970s this space has not
been reappropriated by the citizens of Ankara (Figure 21).
Moreover, once a being is touched, the enframed human being, observing
it as a vacant and available piece of land, rather than a being of collective
memory, wants to further manipulate it. The effort to locate an opera
house, a theater and a convention center has immediately followed
the construction of the pyramid in the space of the hippodrome. Very
fortunately, the Da-Sein has given up the project, remembering that
Paolo Violi Viettis San Siro Hippodrome in Milan, was entered into the
register for Historical Monuments as cultural heritage by the Ministry of
Culture of Italy. The Da-Sein in this case has not fallen into the trap of utter
availability and sheer manipulability.
Reappropriation processes continue for the human beings who have
a world. The houses of the old Chinese quarter in Singapore were
reappropriated for the labor force working in the Central Business District
of the city. The space survives together with skyscrapers sharing the same
space. Along the air-conditioned street, the houses serve as food supply
facility, thereby reappropriating a space for a new use, or a new being
about which the human beings have displayed their awareness (Figure 22).
In zmir, Turkey, the transformation of a structure used as French Custom
Building in the era of capitulations (privileges recognized to foreign
tradesmen) into a shopping center opened the way to a lot of discussions.
The structure was used later again as a Customs building and then a fish

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Figure 22. Houses of the old Chinese quarter

serve as an air-conditioned food street in
Singapore (Gnay, 1999).

Figure 23. Konak Pier in zmir should be

considered as a remarkable reappropriation
of the being (Gnay, 2006).

market. Designed by the engineer Gustave Eiffel, who also designed the
famous tower in Paris, the structure signifies a technological product
and refers to the abdication of those privileges by the nation-state of the
Republic of Turkey.
In the reappropriation processes of such buildings, the debates revolve
around two subjects. The first concentrates on use and advocates of
culture expect the building to function as a museum or centre of arts.
The investors logic, on the other hand, rests on the turnover of the
investment. The second criticism is immediately raised on their restoration
or renovation practices. In the ontological argument, the subsistence of the
being comes to the fore. In this connotation the Konak Pier application may

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be considered as a remarkable case where the human beings do not visit it

only for shopping but simply to be there (Figure 23).
REFURBISHMENT AND PERSONIFICATION
Urban environment is not only a collection of buildings and spaces, but
full of meanings of their image and townscape, defining and ornamenting
the towns. Reproduction operations in historic contexts have stimulated
extensive use of image and townscape. The author is attempting to
combine these two theoretical frames under the concept of spacescape, as a
deliberation of the ontological debate. The refurbishment of the spacescape
is another process of reproduction of urban space.
The phenomenon of conservation with reference to space as being, has
given way to the emergence of two theoretical constructs that were
developed in 1960s. The theories were based on real people as there
beings. In the context of ontology, the human being is defined as a being
with the capacity to make meaningful interpretations. Lynchs study
or rather contribution to the image of the city (1960) was also criticized
for simplifying the urban environment. Despite all counter arguments,
it is believed that as far as the Da-Sein is concerned, the approach still
remains to be unique, since it asks the being the where and the when.
Its being simple should not be seen as a weakness, and to the contrary,
to communicate the views of the designers to the public, this should be
considered as a merit.
For Heidegger, there is no world without a meaningful interpretation and
there is no meaningful interpretation without a world. Since the human
being is the only creature-that-interprets, in interrogating the spacescape,
a method dwelling on the human beings observations may be used. Such
a simple method already exists. Kevin Lynch developed the concept of
image and its terminology through questioning the individual on the street
-the Da-Sein. Beings that were aware of their environment had made a
meaningful interpretation of real things in their environment revealing the
famous elements of the image of the city formulated by Kevin Lynch.
In his very well known study, Kevin Lynch had discovered that individuals
perceived the city through the famous five elements -paths, edges, nodes,
landmarks and districts. A combination of the first four elements make up
the district with which individuals associate themselves with reference to
there and when as Da-Sein, that has a world rather than other beings
which are in the world. An investigation of the environment or places as to
how they have evolved, and as to what they mean to the Da-Sein are also
subjects of conservation.

15. Ulus Square houses Bankas by Giulio

Mongeri (1929), Smerbank by Martin
Elsaesser (1937-38) and the Mehmetik Statue
by Heinrich Krippel (1927).

In nye (Black Sea coast), the judges climb (kad yokuu) refers to real
there beings; a path along which the dwellings of judges existed (Figure
24). Hence it is more than a physical being. The Princes street in Edinburgh
builds up an edge between the medieval city and the Castle, alongside
the new town. The being of the moat has given this opportunity to the
evolution of the edge (Figure 25). The Ulus Square in Ankara is a node with
many landmarks (Figure 26). Having witnessed the birth of the Republic
of Turkey, it is containing works of art and architecture (15). Moreover, for
the there beings of the period, going downtown was identical with going to
Ulus, the historical town.
The image elements build up meanings for the Da-Sein who have a world,
and without meaningful interpretation such a world cannot be established.

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It is for this reason that conservation should not be reduced to only

buildings as epistemologies, but should consider meaningful elements of
the city. Paths (routes valued by the Da-Sein), edges (boundaries where
the Da-Sein establishes relations between two different places), nodes
(meaningful points where the there beings come together), landmarks
(points of interest for the Da-Sein; sometimes visible from a distance) build
up the districts of the city with which the there beings associate themselves
as for instance in the case of Mardin (Figure 27).
Figure 24. Judges Climb (Kad Yokuu) is a
path in nye, where real judges dwelled,
connoting to a historical event (Gnay, 2006).

Parallel to Lynchs image study, Gordon Cullen (1964) has established a

vast terminology of the urban environment concerning serial vision, place
and optics. Bringing all these together was called the art of relationship.
Consciously or not, both Lynch and Cullen seem to be influenced by the
ontological discourse. They have made observations with reference to the
products of the Da-Sein, that is, beings having a world and asking the basic
question of ontology: Why is there anything at all, rather than nothing?
The human beings encounter with its past originates from this basic
interrogation to combine real things and events with meaningful
interpretations. The historical or the traditional has transferred from the
past to the future a huge number of beings, some relating to tangible
objects like surface renders, landscaping, building details (windows,
chimneys, gates), walls, fountains, statues, railings, steps, etc.; some
relating to intangibles like place, optics and serial vision. Cullen called this
world of the human beings - townscape.
Therefore, when any object is to be put in the environment, the Da-Sein first
interrogates the existence of that object as to whether it is a dwelling on
the earth, casting shadow on something or a meaningful interpretation or
not. After all, as far as the ontological argument of Heidegger is concerned,
out there is filled with objects and we have care or concern for them.
This care is one of the main characteristics of human existence - care for
the world around us, both the natural and the human world (Palmer,
1994, 336). What makes stanbuls silhouette (Figure 28) valuable is that
it is unique, existing with the nature. Although what we call silhouette is
intangible, since being is what is seen and observed by the individual, it
turns into an object of conservation, as a being we perceive.

Figure 25. Princes street in Edinburgh builds

up an edge between the old and the new
towns (Gnay, 1986).

Refurbishment transcends what was earlier called passive conservation

and attempts to define the modes of intervention to the perpetuation of
cultural and natural beings. In a world of beings, the Da-Sein carries its
world to the future. Criticizing the production of space in the modern age,
Lucien Kroll talks about creative participation in building (Lampugnani,

CONSERVATION AS AN ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEM

Figure 26. Ulus Node contains high quality

landmarks of art and architecture (Gnay,
2005).
Figure 27. The District in Mardin comprises
a collection of meaningful elements for the
there beings (Gnay, 2006).

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1988, 192). Historically this has always been the case. In societies of the
past, the Da-Sein has obeyed the rules formulated in the democratic
processes. The consequent urban environment owes its character to the
creative participation of the Da-Sein who is aware of time and space. What
lies underneath the processes of conservation in the reproduction of urban
space is probably to be sought in the perpetuation of the being - to recall
Boyer (1994): places for public assemblage and public debate, as well as
private memory walks and personal retreats.
Conservation of the historic and the traditional, at the same time
provoked designers of the modern world to integrate their architectural
understanding with the community. One challenging experiment was
Ralph Erskine, who in Byker development in New Castle/England,
retained the sites indigenous identity through a process of reconstruction
with tenant involvement (Trancik, 1986, 218). The success of its physical
outcome has become an expression of the society and particular lifestyles of the people of Byker, who are overwhelming in their support and
enthusiasm for their revitalized neighborhood.

Figure 28. The stanbul silhouette is unique

(Gnay, 2007).

Hence in Byker, revitalization of the neighborhood reflected the spirit of

the dwellers and the settlement found a new personality, a new being.
The space and time consciousness of the architect as Da-Sein searched for
something rich with the local scale and incident of the picturesque and
in doing so, the objective presence of things, timber, brick, concrete, the
changing roofline, and the canti-levered balconies, some of them with
arbors or shed roofs (Drexler, 1980, 146), clearly produced a being to be
found in thatness and whatness (Figure 29).

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Figure 29. In Byker, revitalization of the

neighborhood reflected the personification of
the dwellers (Drexler, 1980, 146).
Figure 30. Personification in Pogradec,
Albania, stems from real need (Gnay, 2002).

BAYKAN GNAY

In Byker, personification of the environment was maintained through the

guidance of the architect. In the town of Pogradec, Albania, personification
effort purely came from dwellers who simply needed more dwelling space
(Figure 30). Turning back to private ownership after long years under the
socialist rule, different than the Byker case, people simply personified the
rigidity of labour class housing stock of the city.
GENTRIFICATION
Finally the author has felt the necessity to put his own views on the process
of gentrification, which is an eternal debate in the reproduction and more
specifically conservation of urban space. From the perspective of the
Athens Charter (1933); preservation should not entail that people are
obliged to live in insalubrious conditions (Ekistics, 1963).
Reproduction of urban space is always a painful process. There are always
losses of historic and cultural beings and there is often gentrification of
the users or extinction of certain activities. It has taken some two hundred
years for San Marco plaza in Venice to find its final form. Needless to say, it
occupies one of the highest places in assessments made on both urban and
civic design products (Figure 31).
When observed after centuries as a finished product, the plaza no doubt,
is a glorious creation of man. The time spent in its production as a being,
however, is out of the perception of one generation. It was the product of
sometimes spontaneous, sometimes conscious political, social and financial
processes. As discussed and depicted by Bacon (1982, 104-5), it was the
result of a long series of agonizing decisions constantly aimed at perfecting
the squares. In fact the agonizing decisions aimed at transforming the
ownership or possession of land, which meant gentrification.
In the modern world, the main reasons behind gentrification should be
sought in the urban processes. The mobility of social classes is ever causing
decentralization - centralization and succession - invasion in the city.
Whenever there is decentralization of the high classes, the areas they were
once living are invaded by more inferior groups. It is known that subjects
of conservation are generally such invaded parts of the city. In many cases,
when revitalization of those areas takes place, they are also gentrified
where real property is transferred back to the upper middle classes, unless
there is community action. Hence calling this process gentrification, is not
coincidental. It is a process where the once higher class housing areas are
again occupied by higher classes. Therefore, the author believes that we

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should call the process regentrification, since the high classes are claiming
back their territory.
Gentrification since then has become an inevitable effect of property
transformation and urban social movements in the western city in mainly
revitalized or rehabilitated areas. Though there were efforts to rehabilitate
and improve the deteriorated tissue as in the case of Kreuzberg in Berlin
for the existing dwellers, reproduction of urban space has terminated with
gentrification.
Under these circumstances, Leontidou (1993, 959), originally a scholar from
Greece, argued that, Gentrification of inner urban areas which has been
attributed to the service class, may be so only in the north; in the south,
by contrast, all kinds of middle and upper classes have never abandoned
the city centre. What is meant here is that, in the Mediterranean countries
the succession and invasion processes (Chapin, 1965, 26-9) of social
groups in the cities were less significant which kept the cities always in
their historical contexts. Leontidou (1993, 959), has also claimed that the

Figure 31. Piazza San Marco with its

Campanella (Venice) found its final shape in
a 200 year of gentrification process (Gnay,
1966).

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Figure 32. The There-Beings (Da-Sein) have

their own world as dwellers of Alaat caring
for their environment (Gnay, 2005).

middle classes deserve credit of reproducing inner-city, high quality areas

spontaneously, and mostly without planning.

Figure 33. The There-Beings (Da-Sein) have

their own world; the authors home (Gnay,
2005).

Whether this argument is applicable to all the Mediterranean countries is

debatable. In any case the reference indicates the power of the Da-Sein who
is resisting the mobile modern society for whom place is an image; for real
dwellers it is habituation (Figure 32).
If, in modernity, we are pressing toward the projected image of a place and
not an actual place, what does this mean for actual places? Remembering
that places are the primordially understood contexts of our everyday
lives, then the key aspect of dwelling in a place, of being at home in a
place, is that place itself is not normally thematically noticed. Place is
embodied, habituated. These habituated contexts of everyday life -ones
neighbourhood, ones house, ones furnishings, ones job, ones marriage,
and so on- fail into the background of perception. But it is this very ability
to become background, to allow other events to stand forward, which gives
place its potency (Hill, 2002, 60).

Living in the same place and building is no longer a usual practice of the
mortal human being. This point was deliberated by Wirth (1967) and Hill
(2002) that technology unbinds us from any dependence on a particular
location, against Norberg-Schulzs insistence on place as element of
collective memory. Still, the author has been living in the same house
for 48 years (Figure 33). The house he is living in was built by his parents
when the citizens of Ankara were dwellers on this earth and under the
sky. He believes that this makes him privileged, but he also knows that

CONSERVATION AS AN ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEM

16. Concerning processes of the reproduction

of space, the author has leaned on some
of the extensive terminology used to
define the process. There are many other
terms developed and used by different
authors; protection, urban archaeology,
infill development, industrial archaeology,
reconstruction, reurbanization, relocation,
reinvigoration, etc., each waiting for
elaboration.

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after him that house will not exist. This is a natural result of aging of the
building and the childrens quest for new places.
CONCLUSION
Reproduction of urban space covers a lackluster of terms (16) varying
from total conservation to total destruction of parts of the city. When
we are concerned with only the techniques of conservation for instance,
epistemological considerations begin to govern, and the answers to
what, why and how to conserve beings concentrate on need, function,
public interest, refurbishment, heritage or identity. In fact such questions
are easier to answer since we are dealing with a world of objects. Such
approaches, however, cannot readily resolve the questions in mind. To
do this we have to understand that the fundamental problem lies in the
existence of beings. To repeat Heidegger, everything we talk about is
in being. What, when and how reflect our being. Reality, the objective
presence of things, subsistence, validity, existence and the there is, all
relate to the being, for which we have to have care and concern.
In this framework conservation of natural and cultural beings and their
perpetuation through various policies of reproduction of urban space
will mean the perpetuation of the human being itself. As accentuated
throughout the paper, the objects of conservation only exist; the Da-Sein
however has a world in which the other beings are cared for. When the
society as a whole becomes aware of this crucial attachment between the
human being and all other natural and cultural beings, then conservation
may become a successful human approach to its being.
Our social prejudices and education ideologies fall short in questioning
our own being. Too much emphasis on epistemological concerns or
pure practical knowledge causes alienation of the being from itself and
entanglement. In this framework, the author believes that, the Da-Sein
should attain one more attribute, that of more concern to natural and
cultural beings.
The conservation discourse has long remained in the monopoly of the
intelligentsia for whom the natural and cultural beings mattered. For the
individuals who owned and used them, the intelligentsias efforts were
negative in terms of the new building rights they were running after. In
the last decades, those cities who have been able to preserve their cultural
beings, have perceived that the survival of those beings, contribute to
their survival too; ontologically primal oneness of the four -earth and sky,
divinities and mortals.
For the human being, when the act of conservation of the object, or more
truly its being contributes to the human beings subsistence, then the
mortal associates itself with the thing to be conserved and conservation
conscience develops. The medical sciences are constructed on the ethics to
provide for the continuation of life of human beings. Conservation efforts
ought to be perceived as a similar endeavor and the mortal human being
should be endowed with consciousness that the nature and the respectful
cultural beings it has produced need to be cared for. Just like medicine,
environment is also a problem of ethics. Otherwise, the termination of
other beings may mean the termination of the human being, who is aware
of them.

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Alnd: 04.08.2008; Son Metin: 27.02.2009

Anahtar Szckler: koruma; kltr
varlklar; varlkbilim; Da-Sein; Heidegger.

BR VARLIKBLM SORUNSALI OLARAK

KENTSEL MEKNIN KORUNMASI
Korumann bir ok tanm bilgi kuramndan yola kmakta ve miras, ant,
tarihi yap gibi deyimlerle konuya yaklamaktadrlar. Ondokuzuncu
yzylda estetik kayglarla balayan korumann boyutlar gnmzde
genilemi ve toplumsal bellek ve yer kavramlaryla tanmlanan, bireyin
yaamna dair her eye ilikin bir olguya dnmtr. Bu durumda
bilgi kuram yetersiz kalmaktadr. Bu alma konuya bir baka adan
bakmakta ve varlk bilimini korumann balam olarak yorumlamaktadr.
nsann en byk kltr rn olduu sylenen kentler srekli olarak
eskiden varolanla varolacak olan ilerinde barndrrlar. Bu balamda
iktisadi yapnn getirdii devingen byme sreleri ile kullanmlardaki
eitlenme, sosyal yapnn getirdii kentteki snflarn hareketlilii kenti
srekli olarak bir atma alanna dntrr. Bu atma iinde kent
kendini yeniden retir.
Chicago kent sosyolojisi okulunun 1920lerden balayarak gelitirdii
kentin gelimesi ve kendini yenilemesine ilikin kentsel ekoloji yaklam
kenti bir organizma olarak grr ve bir kenti oluturan ve yeniden
oluturan sreleri inceler. lk srece bal olarak kentler nce merkezde
younlamakta ve yaplam alanlarn oluturmaktadrlar (centralization).
Daha sonra her kentin yaamnda kimi zaman merkezden epere
doru gelimeler yaanmakta (decentralization), burada baz eiklerle
karlaldnda yeniden merkezde younlama istemi ortaya kmaktadr.
Kent epere doru bydnde merkezdeki eski dokular terk edilmekte,
terk ve igal (succession-invasion) olarak bilinen ikinci sre olumaktadr.
Bu durumda kimi kullanm ya da sosyal gruplar zaman iinde deien
koullara bal olarak bir blgeyi terk etmekte, daha alt dzeydeki
kullanm ve gruplar o yreyi igal etmektedir. zellikle kentlerin epere

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doru yayld dnemlerde oluan bu durumlarda, eskiden prestiji

olan yerler knt blgelerine dnmekte ve korumann kentsel
dokudaki konusunu oluturan tarihsel ve deerli yaplar knt srecine
girmektedirler. Sonraki dnemde ise, kent yeniden merkeze yneldiinde,
bu kez korumann konusunu oluturan binalarn bulunduu yerlerde
arazinin getirisi ykselmekte ve bu tr yaplar yklarak yerlerine yeni
yaplar ina edilebilmektedir.
Kentsel ekolojinin kenti bir organizma olarak grmesine kar kan
Marks dnrler ise, kentin bir organizma olmadn, bir siyasi atma
alan olduunu savlayarak, snflarn ve devletin mdahaleleriyle kentin
retildiini ve yeniden retildiini vurgulamlardr. Yukarda aklanan
sreler iinde ok sayda ve farkl nitelikte siyasa devreye sokulmutur.
Bir kentin duraan olmadna ve kendini yeniden retmesi gereine
deinilmiti. Kukusuz kentlerin belirli yrelerinde deiim ve dnmler
de olacaktr. Ancak, anlan siyasalarn ou salt knt blgeleri iin
kullanlmam, toplumsal bellei oluturan, orada-varln deneyimledii
deerleri de yok etmitir. almada yazar, kendi meslek deneyimi ile
okumalarna bal olarak kentlerin yeniden retim srelerine ilikin
uygulama ya da kuramsal ereveleri, varln srdrlmesi olarak
tanmlad koruma olgusu ile ilintilendirerek irdelemitir.
Koruma kentlerin yeniden retilmesinde bavurulan olgulardan bir
tanesini oluturmaktadr. Salt teknik sre olarak yorumlandnda bilgi
kuramnn mant devreye girmekte ve niin, neyi, nasl koruyacamzn
yantlar gereksinim, ilev, kamusal alan, bezeme, kltr miras ve kiilik
gibi daha kolay yantlayabileceimiz noktalarnda younlamaktadr.
Sonuta nesneler dnyas ile uratmz da bir gerekliktir. Ancak
bu yaklamlar yeterli midir? Varlkbilim bunlar yetersiz grmekte
ve temel tartmann nesnelerin varoluunda yattn savlamaktadr.
Heideggerin deyiiyle hakknda konutuumuz, anlam yklediimiz
ve ilintilendirdiimiz her ey varla aittir. Dolaysyla varlk, hem
kendimizdir, hem de hakknda yorum yaptmz, anlamlar yklediimiz
dmzdaki nesnelerdir. Bu btnlk, yinelemek gerekirse; eylerin
nesnel mevcudiyetinde, gereklikte, srdrlebirlikte, geerlilikte,
varoluta (Da-Sein), ve orada varolmakta aranmaldr (Heidegger 1996, 5).
Bu balamda doal ve kltrel varlklarn korunmas, temelde kendi
varlmzn da korunmas anlamna gelmektedir. Korumann konusu
olan nesneler kendi balarna dnldnde yalnzca vardr, OradaVarlkn ise dnyas vardr. Koruma bu balamda dnldnde
ve toplum tarafndan benimsendiinde baarl olabilmektedir.
Bireye, evresindeki nesnelerle bir btn olduunda kendi varln
srdrebilecei bilinci alanmaldr.
Toplumsal koullanmalarmz ve eitim sistemlerimiz insann kendi
varlna eilmiyor. Ya bilgi kuramnn koullanmalar, ya da salt pratik
bilgi bireyde kendi varlna kar yabanclamaya ve kafa karklna
neden olmaktadr. Bu erevede yazar, orada-varla (Da-Sein) bir nitelik
daha eklenmesi gerektiini dnmektedir. Bu da korunacak doa ve
kltr varlklarna sahip kmaktr.
Koruma sylemi uzun dnem aydnlarn denetiminde kalm, korunacak
nesnenin kendisinden ok zerinde bulunduu yerin getirisi n plana
kmtr. Korunacak nesnenin kendisi, gerek varl, bir yaam srdrme
esi olduunda birey o nesneyle kendi varln btnletirmekte ve
koruma bilinci geliebilmektedir. Nasl ki kamu bilinci ve tp bilimi,
bireylerin yok edilmeleri deil, sonuna kadar varlklarnn srdrlmesi

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zerine kurgulanmtr, koruma da bu ynyle alglanmal ve evre ahlk

asndan da insann iinde bulunduu doa ile kendi rettii saygn
kltr varlklarn yok etmesinin kendi varln da yok edecei bilinciyle
donatlmaldr.