Form kararları üzerinden mimarlık ürününde anlamın incelenmesi
An examination of meaning in architecture by looking at form decisions
Yazar: MERVE MERTOL
Danışman: DR. ÖĞR. ÜYESİ İFFET HÜLYA ARI
İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi / Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü / Mimarlık Ana Bilim Dalı / Mimari Tasarım Bilim Dalı
Derece: Yüksek Lisans, 2019
Konu: Mimarlık = Architecture

Özet:
Çalışma, mimaride 'form' üzerinden oluşturulan anlamsal ifadenin yine form kararları üzerinden incelenmesini içermektedir. Bu çerçevede, 'form'un mimarlıkta anlam taşıyıcı bir özelliği olduğu vurgusunu yapar. 
Kavramın anlaşılması için öncelikle genel bir çerçevesi çizilmeye çalışılmış ve mimarlık kuramında zamansal düzlemde hangi tanımlara karşılık geldiği incelenmiştir. Çalışmanın bu kısmında Adrian Forty'nin,'form'un  tarihsel kökenleri ve mimarlık süreci boyunca tanımlanışı ve mimarlığın ne şekilde hizmetine sunulmuş olduğu hakkındaki inceleme önemli bulunmaktadır.
Bunun ardından, 'form'un kavramsallaştırılmasına gidilmiş ve ilk kullanımından hareketle, Antikite'den günümüze intikal etmiş olan doğası hakkında bilgi sahibi olunmaya çalışılmıştır. 'Form', önceki dönemlerde sadece bir nesnenin dış hatlarının tasviri olmakla kalmamış, daha geniş anlamlarda da kullanılmıştır. Kavramın kökeninde felsefi bir dünya görüşü yatmaktadır. 'Form' ideal olanın eşdeğeri anlamında kullanılarak, algılanır nesnenin ötesinde bir olguya işaret etmektedir. Bu anlamda tez kapsamında Platon'un idealar teorisi ele alınmıştır. Kavram aynı zamanda eski kullanımına göre 'tip' (typus), 'arketip' olarak da kullanımıştır. 
İleriki bölümlerde formun işlev ile olan ilişkisi irdelenmiş ve Guyer'in ifadesiyle; Kant'ın yarattığı bir tarihsel kırılma üzerinden ele alınmıştır. İşlev formun öncülüdür vurgusuna alternatif bir aralık açan bu düşüncede, yapıların sadece pragmatik düzlemdeki işlevlerini yerine getirmeleri beklenen kurallı sistemler olmanın ötesinde, yerine getirmeleri beklenen işlevin anlamsal boyutunu dışavurumu oldukları savı geçerlidir. Başka bir deyişle yapı, işlevinin anlamsal ifadesini algılayana aktarmak durumundadır. Burada da bir form- işlev ikili oluşturulmuş fakat, modernist manifestonun öne sürdüğü direkt ilişkiye kıyasla daha dolaylı bir ilişki kurulmuştur. Bu noktasa Colquhoun'un ortaya attığı, uyarlanmış 'tip' karamı da önem kazanmıştır, çünkü bu kavram üzerinden Colquhoun, tasarımcının form-işlev sabit ikilisinden dışarı bir serbest yaratı alanı bulduğunu ifade eder. Bu serbest yaratı alanı da, tez kapsamında 'anlamsal işlev' olarak adlandırılan alternatif işlev açılımı ile örtüşük bir sav taşır. 
İşlevin anlamsal boyutu çalışmayı mimarlık ve anlam ilişkisi hakkında incelemeye götürmüş ve bu noktada anlamın nasıl şekillerde ortaya çıkabileceği tartışılmıştır. Çalışmanın sonraki bölümünde, tasarlayanın ifade etmek istediği anlam ve deneyimleyen öznenin çıkarmladığı anlam olarak ifade edilmek istenen bir anlam okuması yapılmıştır. Bu kısımda Charles Jencks'in ortaya attığı 'enigmatic signifier' kavramı önem kazanır. Bu kavram algılanan miamri ürünün çoklu anlam yapısına atıfta bulunarak, günümüz mimarisindeki form zenginliği sonucu ortaya çıkan anlamsal karmaşaya vurgu yapar. 
Çalışmanın son bölümünde  form üzerinden anlam yaratma temel prensibi üzerinden, mimarlar Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito ve Aires Mateus 'un yapıları, form kararı alma konusunda kendi söylemleri doğrultusunda incelenecektir.

Abstract:
Form is one of the key terms within the creative academic domain which includes architecture, design, urban planning, sculpture etc. All of these productive fields yearn first of all to communicate a meaning to the observer through the medium of visuals. Therefore a common ground upon which the creator of the content and its receiver have to be coordinated as to what meaning to derive from the perceived formal entity has to be constructed. This phenomenon of communicating via formal language usually presents itself in a two way system between the active creator and the passive perceiver. In order to create a unique piece of artefact in any kind of form one needs to have a visual repertoir of things inherent in his counscouisness which he acquired throughout his lifetime. On the other hand, every other person receiving this visual information starts to build upon his or her own form repertoir from what is seen. Thus, designing and form generating is an act of effecting and being effected. 
In the second chapter a general frame of the term 'form' will be drawn by looking at different domains within and outside of architecture. Diverse definitions of the term are being looked upon with the preassumption that 'form' refers to concrete and abstract phenomena at the same time. This assumption is confirmed by a further look into the philosophical field. In the architectural field however the notion 'form' has been defined according to different paradigmatic perspectives thus being categorized either in terms of structural clearity or in terms of the dialectic of abstract and concrete understanding of the term. As an example, Eisenman's 'generic' and 'specific' forms as he coined them refers to that kind of differentiation. In addition to that, Adrian Forty's deep examination is being considered as one of the main sources for the understanding about the journey of form throughout architectural history. With the help of his historic view one can make an inference as to what paradigmatic changes caused which kind of understanding of form in terms of the abstract-concrete duality. The abstract conception of the term has entered the architectural domain just at the beginning of the 20th century whereas before that time the term almost only refered to an concrete entity, to a 'shape'. This conceptual notion can be linked as far back as to the early philosopher's understanding of the life and matter, which was also to be found throughout centuries afterwards in the social fields.      
Starting from the antique times philosophical thinkers were concerned about the source of matter. In general it can be said that there was two basic ways of seeing matter and the sorroundings of the man. One was the metaphysical understanding of the matter in which there is a dimension outside of the tangible, concrete world where the truth is found and from which everything in the lived world can be derived from. Plato was the leading name in that way of understanding and suggested two domains he coined as the world of 'ideas' which he also refered to as 'forms' and the world of 'phenomena', the imperfect reflections of these 'ideas'. The other way of seeing was that of Aristoteles who suggested that form and matter cannot be seperated and that one conditions the other. These are the two main poles of understanding the material world which also affected the architectural world and the architectural practics for a long time up until today. Although this duality influenced architecture for a long period of time architects defined form as a tangible and visual entity until the dawn of the modern movement where the notion became a conceptual component of the designing process. Famous manifestos like 'form follows function' brought the term to the fore as a separate topic on his own where form referred not only to architectural objects themselves but also to transcendental dimensions of what is to be expressed through architectural form. But following antique teachings form as a transcendental idea was always present other domains, so much so that one can assume the beginnig of scientific knowledge has had its seeds in the seeing the world in terms of the notion of form. The notions 'form', 'idea' and 'archetype' all was referring to the same thing for a long period of time and the thinking that it is possible to link everything to an ancestral archetype made it possible to categorize things and thus create a systematic field of knowledge. In the later times these three terms get separated from each other  and 'form' only in today's architecture again means something beyond the palpable entity which is the architectural object itself. 
The third part of the thesis is about meaning in architecture and positions itself upon the transcendental understanding of form and focuses on the form and function duality which is one of the best known architectural mottos of all times. But different than the usual acceptance of this duality as an objective, one to one relationsship of two poles that condition each other, this chapter tries to define 'function' as something which is the intention of the piece of architecture that has to be fulfilled by finding the right expression of the form. Here the platonic sense of idea again comes into play and architectural form no longer only realizes itself as a direct translation of the objective necessities into matter but gets attached to a different interpretation as the reflection of the idea of the function that was attributed to the specific architectural problem. In that matter the function becomes the idea and the idea corresponds to the architectural form, or the form corresponds to the idea in which the architect tries to find the accurate form that would best give the idea which lies behind the function it has to fulfill. Guyer sees this kind of correlation between form and function as a result of Kantian philosophical thinking which suggests that architectural objects should reflect their functions, that means a church should look like a church or a hall should look like a hall, etc. According to Guyer after this paradigmatic shift the understanding of architecture radically changed which we can still observe until today's architectural practice. With this point of view within the thesis there are two terms coined which should reflect the two distinct understandings of the notion of function. One of them is the 'objective function' the other one the 'semantic function'. Objective function refers to the necessities that the building has to fulfill, semantic function on the other hand refers to the 'idea' that lays behind the intention of the architect which is based on social codes, paradigmatic and stylistic frames and the architect's own inner world of meanings. In this regard the 'idea' stands on the intersection of structuralist and phenomenological view, being a synthesis of these two. This separation also opens up an area for the designer other than that of the circumstances that define the design tast and constitutes where the design process takes place.
Following in the third chapter the question of formalizm is asked. Referring to the literature of Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi's formalism, this part is a trial to find out whether there is an escape from formalism or whether there is always a formalistic instinct in every design process which is inherent in the designer based on the interaction with the outside world and forms in it. Thus it is concluded that every person creates his/her own meaningful contents of certain forms and operate within his/her form universum and in this way has a tendency to act formalistic which is not necessarily a negative thing as it is connotaded as is often the case.     
The discussion about formalism leads to the attempt to understand the nature of the meaning in formal entities such as architectural objects. Therefore a general understanding on the semiotics of architecture was intended. With his original semiotical approach to architecture Baumberger's theory of how architecture signifies  on its unique ways has been investigated. 
The last chapter serves to gain an understanding of how one can decipher the formal decisions that architects make for their design projects in order to create meaning on the basis of the information that was collected so far. In this regard, the synthesis of semantical, semiotical and phenomenological dimensions of experience of both the designer and the user has been seen as important and it is being concluded that form decisions and form perception and the derivation of meaning on both sides is a combination of inherent form - meaning connections and external acceptances. In regard to that way of thinking, works of three architects, Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito and Alvaro Siza are analyzed.