Date

2010

Author

Toker, Saadet
Kocatürk, Tuba
Ünay, Ali İhsan

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Anıtkabir is the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the commander of Turkish War of Independence and the founder of Republic of Turkey. Rather than a work of architecture, Anıtkabir has been a symbol and a focal center of Atatürk’s principles, republican revolutions and modern Turkey. The making of Anıtkabir marks also an important milestone in the architectural history of Republic of Turkey. It is a simple, elegant and aesthetic example of a counter-concept developed against foreign architectural trends in 1940-1950s. Turkish architects and sculptors introduced this work of art by creating modern figures that cover the components of all the past cultures in Anatolia (Figure 1). As a consequence of the World War II, there had been a significant economic downfall in Turkey, especially between the years 1940-1950. In this era, resources had only been spared for strategically important projects. Difficulties in importing reinforcing steel limited the use of reinforced concrete and steel in Turkey as well as all around the world. New constructions started to be erected either by conventional masonry or composite construction techniques. In this period, there are only three prestigious buildings constructed of reinforced concrete in Turkey. These are the Atatürk Cultural Center, the Turkish Grand National Assembly Building, and Anıtkabir. The Atatürk Cultural Center was designed by Feridun Kip and Rüknettin Güney in 1946 and was built in Taksim, İstanbul. The Turkish Grand National Assembly Building was designed by Clemens Holtzmeister in 1938 as a competition project and was built in Ankara, the Capital. The project for Anıtkabir was also designed for a competition by Emin Onat and Orhan Arda in 1942. As for the financial restraints due to the World War II, constructions of all the three buildings were slowed down; moreover the construction of the Atatürk Cultural Center was stopped after the erection of skeletal frame. The project was renewed by Hayati Tabanlıoğlu in 1956 and the construction was completed in 1969, 23 years after it was planned. The project of Anıtkabir was revised in 1951 by Onat and Arda upon the request of the government to decrease the cost. The construction took 9 years from 1944 to 1953. This could be seen as a success when compared to the construction duration of the other two buildings. The construction of the Turkish Grand National Assembly Building started in 1939 and the building was completed in 1961, after 32 years from the start, as majority of the resources were used for Anıtkabir (Tekeli, 2007). Recently in Anıtkabir, the empty space in the basement underneath the mausoleum and the staircase approaching the mausoleum, was decided to be converted into a Turkish War of Independence Museum. A project conducted by the Middle East Technical University (METU) Department of Architecture aimed to assess the general structural capacity and seismic resistance of the mausoleum itself and the structural capacity of the load bearing system used in the staircase. Within the scope of the project, the structural system of Anıtkabir was re-identified, with detailed analytic models prepared for the mausoleum and the staircase separately. Structural analyses were carried out under all possible load cases. Within the frame of the project, both the mausoleum and the staircase sections were analyzed independently under gravity loads. Then another set of analyses was performed to observe the behavior of the structure under probable earthquake loads. Results were evaluated to determine whether the structure is safe or not with its existing condition. Possible effects of modifications about the use of the structure were assessed, and suggestions made for possible modifications on the structural system to obtain a sound structural performance.

Subject Keywords

Mausoleum of Atatürk, Structural analysis, Strengthening, Finite Element Analysis, Earthquake resistant buildings

URI

http://jfa.arch.metu.edu.tr/archive/0258-5316/2010/cilt27/sayi_1/125-138.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/50839

Collections

Department of Architecture, Article