Reconstructing the Memory of the City Through In-Situ Material Traces: Ancient Agora, Kemeralti Bazaar and Konak Square in Izmir

Download

10426585.pdf

Date

2021-9

Author

Katmer Koçkar, Gülsüm

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

453
views

427
downloads

The memory of a city is inscribed not only in its monuments but also in the physical traces and fragments that are the remnants of its past. Cities are formed by human societies in time through architecture. Historical city centers that are places, which incorporate urban memory, provide connections with the past. Since the turn of the 21st century, the display of multi-layered urban areas in historic city centers has been the subject of the city branding policies due to the growing worldwide interest in their historical heritage. Urban and collective memory have been affected by certain historical narratives that dominate. In Izmir, the local government has formed a consensus with the participation of the local actors for the adoption of a comprehensive conservation policy that has highlighted Izmir’s historical identity and the collective memory of the citizens since the late 1990s. This research focuses on three neighboring sites in the historic center of Izmir reflecting different periods of the city where distinctive implementation strategies have been adopted, such as urban archaeology, urban design, conservation and revitalization: The Ancient Agora of Smyrna, the Kemeraltı Bazaar, and the Konak Square. The ongoing archaeological excavations of the monumental remains of the Roman State Agora highlights the significance of the physical endurance in the continuity of urban memory. The urban fabric, which was built upon the Agora of Smyrna in successive periods, was cleared off to display the glorious Hellenistic and Roman past of the city. Kemeraltı Bazaar, on the other hand, that was formed as a trade center and expanded on the ancient harbor in the Ottoman period, continues its vitality today. The administrative center of Izmir, Konak Square, has been the primary intervention area because it is the most visible public space of the city. In 2003, an urban design project was implemented prioritizing the place of the square in the collective memory as a public place. Architect Ersen Gürsel reorganized the square through subtle historical references. This study examines the selected projects implemented and developed in the historical core of Izmir, with a theoretical framework that comprehends the concepts on the urban and collective memory, and history.

Subject Keywords

Collective Memory, Urban Memory, Permanences, Continuity, Historic City Center of Izmir

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/94241

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Evoking the city’s past, recollecting the citizen’s memory in a post-conflict urban setting: the case of Suriçi, Diyarbakır Kaya, Berçem; Severcan, Yücel Can; Department of City and Regional Planning (2021-1-06) In different historical period of times, cities are the subject of the dialectic between destruction and reconstruction. This destruction is threatening the socio-spatial, socio-political character of cities and daily life practices of the locals by destroying the physical setting of the place, which erase traces of the past. This process brings a memory loss in urban places, for the sake of converting the city into the place of dominant ideology or authority. For this reason, during reconstruction processe...
Reconstructing Authenticity The Erimtan Archaeology and Arts Museum in the Ankara Citadel Savaş Sargın, Ayşen (null; 2015-10-09) Three modest houses that were transformed into Erimtan Museum at the Citadel of Ankara were dated to the late seventeenth century and found in a state of demolition due to neglect over the years. The major goal of the architectural interventions was the preservation of the historical and material qualities of the existing houses and the surrounding historical fabric. If the old houses were conceived as ‘authentic’, their reconstructed version was based on a body of information about the functional layout an...
Conservati on of Ancient Stone Quarry Landscapes in theEastern Mediterranean (QUARRYSCAPES) Saltık, Emine Nevin(2008-10-31) The cultural heritage of the Eastern Mediterranean is predominantly made from stone, and throughout antiquity thousands of smaller and larger quarries were opened. The archaeological record in the quarries comprises rare evidence of stone extraction sites, roads, harbours, settlements, ceramics and inscriptions, which collectively constitute an ?ancient quarry landscape?. Such landscapes are of crucial importance, not only to our understanding of the lives of the non-elite, but of the political and ideolog ...
The dialogue between community archaeology and livelihoods in rural context: the case of Komana /Tokat. İlter, Ceren; Erciyas, D. Burcu.; Department of Urban Policy Planning and Local Governments (2020) Cultural and archaeological heritage, as a reflection of elapsed time, conveys both the traces of past belonging to its immediate territory and also carries them into the future. Throughout centuries new and different layers bearing differing values interweave to contribute to the significance of cultural assets in an intricate way. The cultural, economic, and social dynamics of the territory, where the cultural heritage exists, is shaped by this interwoven and authentic pattern. However, singular and stere...
Investigation on deterioration mechanisms on the basalts used in the Diyarbakır city walls Dursun, Felat; Topal, Tamer; Department of Geological Engineering (2017) The Diyarbakır City Walls (DCW), which were recently added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List, are among the largest and most impressive monuments from ancient times. Basalts having such different textural properties as massive and vesicular were employed as the principal material in the construction of the DCW. Like many other historical structures, the DCW are suffering from stone deterioration. A large variety of weathering forms can be observed on the basalts used in different sections of the DCW. This dis...

Citation Formats

G. Katmer Koçkar, “Reconstructing the Memory of the City Through In-Situ Material Traces: Ancient Agora, Kemeralti Bazaar and Konak Square in Izmir,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2021.