Local Cultures – Global Spaces

Abstract

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Placemaking and place deprivation are two essential faces of urbanization. Urban geography is not only composed of places but potential places and anti-places. The purposefully made anti-places absorb the significance of the surroundings that co-existed places. While urban place deprivation is the main motive behind the design behavior, not every artefact has to be a place. This research focuses on rethinking the local building strategies that create anti-places in Central Anatolia, Turkey. Further, this hybrid co-existence cultivated the character of places. The study explores emerging patterns of urban formation in urban design under four modes of deprivation corresponding to the atrophied feature: Symbolic (Spatial), Contextual, Temporal and Experiential. Symbolic (Spatial) Atrophy of place caused by contemporary abandonment and urban design failures in spatial anthropology like gigantism and miniaturization. Contextual Atrophy is a co-existence problem of old and new as such inarticulation in heritage like historical leftovers. Moreover, pseudo (synthetic) places such as cookie-cutter buildings or Place Thematization like Disneyfication, Touristification, and Museumization are categories under place atrophy in the temporal dimension. At last, such hybridity of place and anti-place pregnant new patterns of (spatial) experience while the old experiential world was atrophy. Ultimately, anti-places transforming the public character of places must be cared in urban design. The study will continue with a series of studio works performed to explore the morphogenetic heritage of the existing artefacts/places and attempt to reproduce them.