THE PIT OF SHAME: (UN)COVERING THE PAST IN BASMANE, IZMIR
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2021-01-22

In 2016 the Chair of Folkart, a leading construction company in Turkey, proudly announced their plans for a monumental mixed-use project in a building plot in Basmane, a central location in İzmir. He stated that the plot, which had been left inert for the past 17 years and which caused shame for the city would finally be the cause for pride. The site has been known as “the pit of shame” since being deserted due to legal and administrative issues, after foundations were laid for a World Trade Center project in 1998. In the following decades the area was filled with water and inhabited by wild vegetation and living organisms including mosquitoes, seagulls and ducks. The term, the pit of shame, was readily adopted by the media which widely publicized the current situation of the plot.
To cover up shame, Folkart invited five reknowned architectural firms to develop design proposals. The winning design was to be decided by the public. The submitted projects, each consisting of a soaring tower of eye-catching architectural features, were embarrasingly similar in their visual and programmatic approach. The choice of the public to cover shame hardly involved a choice that would effect their lives.
Focusing on the plot in Basmane, our paper addresses the notion of shame from a psychoanalytical viewpoint. We unearth the history of the site from its little known past as an Armenian hospital in the 19th century; the great İzmir fire of 1922; an inter-city bus terminal; and various failed projects in the ensuing years. By means of the scopic drive that results in incessant representations of the “pit of shame” in various media, we explore how the exorbitant pleasure of the drive arouses the feeling of shame and tread the tenuous line between shame and guilt regarding the projected towers.


Baydar, Gülsüm - Güngör, Selin (Yaşar University)