Re-thinking the limits of architecture through the avant-garde formations during the 1960s : projections and receptions in the context of Turkey

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2008
Savaşır, Gökçeçiçek
An inquiry into the voyage of avant-garde within the domains of art and architecture makes it evident that avant-garde is ambiguous in meaning as a word, a term, a phenomenon and a concept. This study aims to decipher avant-garde and to offer a map for its conceptualization in architecture. Taken not as a monolithic statement but as a unitary concept incorporating a number of subjects and formations for granted, in this study, architectural avant-garde is conceptualized as diverse expressions of activated energy of various subjects that reveal completely different attitudes and productions. Unfolding the concept in different dimensions, this study is an endeavor to delve deeper into various layers of theoretical and historical formations; to form a framework for conceptualizing architectural avant-garde through scanning the twentieth-century avant-gardes; to focus on the avant-garde formations of the 1960s by applying this conceptual framework, and the debate on their receptions in the present architectural context of Turkey. Being on the verge of architecture, the avant-gardes during the 1960s, namely Constant Nieuwenhuys, Yona Friedman, Japanese Metabolists, Archigram, Archizoom, and Superstudio, point out that architecture is both an intellectual activity and a physical production. Projections and resonances of these avant-gardes in the Turkish architectural context of the subsequent periods are trail blazed through the expressions of a group of receiving subjects from the Turkish scene of architecture. Hence, this study offers to lay a common ground for debating on the limits of architecture by forming not only the topography of architectural avantgarde in this era, but also a ‘supra-discourse’ on architectural avant-garde.

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Citation Formats
G. Savaşır, “Re-thinking the limits of architecture through the avant-garde formations during the 1960s : projections and receptions in the context of Turkey,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2008.