Türkiye'de mimar otobiyografileri
Architects' autobiographies in Turkey
Yazar: SADEDDİN ALİ PAŞAOĞLU
Danışman: DOÇ. DR. ZEYNEP KUBAN
İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi / Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü / Mimarlık Ana Bilim Dalı / Mimarlık Tarihi ve Kuramı Bilim Dalı
Derece: Yüksek Lisans, 2012
Konu: Biyografi = Biography ; Mimarlık = Architecture ; Tarih = History
Dizin: Biyografi = Biography ; Mimari = Architectural ; Mimarlar = Architects ; Mimarlık = Architecture ; Mimarlık tarihi = Architectural history ; Otobiyografi = Autobiography

Özet:
Bu tez, cumhuriyet döneminde ve özellikle son on yılda mimarlar tarafından yazılmış otobiyografilerin eleştirel okumalarına dayanmaktadır. Otobiyografi hakkındaki güncel çalışmalara dayanılarak türün bir tanımı yapılmış ve bu dönemde Türkiye'de mimarlarca yayınlanan metinler incelenerek bir liste hazırlanmıştır.Bu listeden seçilen metinlere otobiyografi tartışmalarındaki güncel kavramlar ve mimarlık tarihi kavramlarından yola çıkan sorular sorulmuştur. Buna göre metinlerdeki bazı benzer motiflerden ve benzer söylemsel yaklaşımlardan örüntüler çıkarılmış bu örüntülerin sebepleri tartışılmıştır. Bu incelemede farklı mimar tipleri ve farklı otobiyografik anlatı tipleri ortaya çıkmış bu anlatılar aynı zamanda batıdaki örneklerden farklılaşmaları bakımından da irdelenmiştir.Buna göre mimar otobiyografileri hakkındaki bir inceleme mimarlarla ilgili şu konuları tartışmaya çalışmıştır: Otobiyografi müellifi mimarlar, içinde düşündükleri ve ürettikleri hâkim söylemle nasıl ilişkiye girmekte ve mimarlığın değerlerini ve mimar kimliğini kendi benliklerinin kurarken nasıl yeniden üretmektedirler.Otobiyografi nitelikli metinlere, mimarlık tarihi yazınında yaygın olarak başvurulmasına karşın, çoğunlukla bu metinlerin belirli olguları tespit etmeye yarayan nitelikleri göz önünde bulundurulmaktadır. Bu tür okumalarda otobiyografik metinlere olguları anlamak açısından, çoğunlukla başka dokümanların beraberinde yönelinmektedir. Bu utezde, otobiyografilerin tarih metinlerinin değil eleştirel metinlerin ve yorumların eşliğinde okunmasına çalışılmıştır.İncelenen metinlerin sayıca az olduğu ve Cumhuriyet'in farklı dönemlerine eşit olrak yayılmadığı tespit edildiğinden, otobiyografileri ve onları üreten mimarları belirli niteliklerle tasnif etmek mümkün olmamıştır. Bunun yanında, Türkiye'de yazılan mimar otobiyografilerinde yaygın durumlardan birinin kişisel anlatıların tarih anlatılarıyla birleşmesi olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Bu durum, ilgili otobiyografilerde kişisel olana çok az yer verilmesi ile birlikte değerlendirilmiş ve 'Türkiye'de birey kavramının geç oluşmuş olması' yargısıyla da eleştirel olarak tartışılmıştır. Bir başka genel tartışma mimarlık meslek söylemleri çerçevesinde olmuştur, otobiyografisi incelenen mimarların çok farklı meslek pratikleri yürütmelerine karşın, mimarın "yaratıcı-müellif-özne" olarak yeniden ürettikleri gözlemlenmiş bu ideoloji tartışılmıştır. Başka bir örüntünün de, mimarların kendilerini 'öncü devrimci' veya 'yenilikçi seçkin' kavramlarında vücut bulan entelektüel elit konumunda görmeleri ve bu yetkinliği talep etmeleridir.Otobiyografik metinler ister uygulamaya yönelik ister başka alanlarda çalışsınlar mimarların kendilerini 'evlerinde hissetmedikleri' bir üretim alanıdır. Mimarların doğrudan mesleki pratikleri içerisinde ürettikleri, akademik metinler, monograflar , manifestolar ve diğer metinlerle karşılaştırıldıklarında otobiyografik anlatıların nasıl bir farklılık ürettikleri de tartışılmaya çalışılmıştır.

Abstract:
This thesis depends on the study of architects autobiographies which were written in the republican period, mostly after year 2000. After setting out a definition of autobiography a database of such autobiographies is created. Selected texts were studied through the questions that arise from the debates on autobiography and through the questions about architecture history. By these questions some common patterns in these texts are tracked and discussed.Firstly the genre auto-biography is defined according to the contemporary critical texts concerning the subject. Then a resarch is conducted to find such texts which were published. A list of architects' autobiographies made from this research and after these texts were studied some of the autobiographies from the list are selected according to their qualities. (Such as if the text is long enogh to be defined as an autobiography and does it concern the professional life of the architect).The texts were studied through the questions that arise from the debates on autobiography and through the questions about architecture history. By these questions some common patterns in these texts are tracked and discussed. Different types of architecture professions and life-tellings and different types of autobiographical narratives arose from the texts studied.The study tried to ask these questions about architects as professionals: how do these the architects who are the authors of autobiographies, interact with dominant/hegemonic discourse of the professions? How do the while building their own self re-produce the architect identity and morals of the profession.The usage of autobiographical texts are not unfamiliar in architecture history studies.. But these texts are generally used for constructing other biographical text and/or mostly for fact-checking. These kind of studies refer to biographies alondside other kinds of historical documents. This study however tries to focus on these texts as its main subject and tries to read them through critical tools.As the autobiographies are studied, some of them have come to spotlight and are studied widely. Three autobiographies, which belong to Hande Suher, Aydın Boysan and Doğan Kuban were the ones that brought forward and studied furter.One of them belongs to Hande Suher (1929) who studied architecture in years 1946-51 in İstanbul Technical University and become an academic in the City and Regional Planing department in the same university. She did several architectural design and city planning projects, was the first dean of the faculty of architecture (1981 -1985).Hande Suher's autobiography was titled "A Life Story Which Is Dedicated To The Public Good, People Live When They Are Remembered"(suher, 2010). This book is the only work that has qualities of a complete life story, between the works that are studied for this thesis. Suher tries to tell her life from her family roots, to her early chilhood and her professinal life until today. She has an emphasizes the fact that she was well educated in the family and in the school although her family did not have too much opportunities. She had always tried to be a sophisticated young turkish intelectual. She often pays her indeptness to the people who supported her education. By this, Suher indicates that the life quality she experienced was both a preference and a privilage.Hande Suher's autobiography has a strong moral emphasis. Her former student- co-workers who helped her to study and publish the autobiograpy, state in the introduction that they wanted Suher's life story to set an example to the next generation. Suher herself also frequenty indicates that she lived her life for the public good. She also expresses her indeptness to the Turkish Republic, its founder and the İstanbul Technical University which he studied and worked for years.One of the essential qualities -actually the first one- of Hande Suher's autobiographical self which she knits around her professional personality is that she considers her story as a moral. According to this, in her autobiograhy, there is a protoganist occurring as an example or/and carrier of the moral message which she gives importance to deliver as the author. In the context of the moral message given, this protoganist should not be contradictory or giving unnecessary information. This obligation makes her protagonist look like a figure from a moral tale"menkıbe". Inevitably, this puts a distance between Suher and the self that she narrates and puts her personal conflicts or/and privacy outside of her autobiograhy. Beside to this moral message, there are also aims of ?recognition of her works? and ?challenge with negativities in her life?. These two aims become included in the autobiography by emphasizing her "innocence" against negative experiences of her life.. It is possible to think that Suher tries to reconcile her moral protoganist with the other aims of writing her autobiograhy.Another autobiography which was studied with some detail is Aydın Boysan's " Hayat Tatlı Zehir, Aydın Boysan Kitabı - Life a Sweet Poison, the Aydın Boysan Book". Architect Aydın Boysan is one who holds multiple identities having the title of an humorous writer who has approximately 30 books which 16 of them are his personal narratives. This autobiographical interview book about him is the only one which claims to be about all of his life, among his narratives.Even though the autobiographical interview books gives a structure to life stories by setting the story into a chronological order and dividing it into episodes, Boysans autobiography often lacks elements that unify the narrative. Boysan, as he does in his newspaper artivals and other books, tries to tell interesting stories as much as possible regardless if the story blongs to someone else or if it is an eating-dining recepy of some kind. Boysans' life story is full of bright and funnny observations about his contry of any subject he talkes/writes about. His story is full of anectodes with interesting details and this gives a certain quality of "micro history" to his life narrative. Again, like Suher, Boysan's autobiography draws away his intimate self from his own life story. This time it is both for giving a moral message and for the sake of telling an interesting story.Aydın Boysan likes to define his profession to be another type of "planning practice". Like all other planning practices architecture is "the practice of giving future an order". It seems that Boysan thinks, this vision of architecture,engineering and planning can be applied to both social conditions and is a recipe for all of the society.Like in most of the autobiographies which are studied, Boysan defines himself and professionals of his kind to be the "pioneering experts" and "rational elite" of his country who know how things must be done and ready to dictate his visions to the citizens. He longs for early years of turkish repuclic when the society was more bounded and the idea of development envisiond without any questions. The country he observes in recent years is one which has losts its visions and moral values and does not need this professional elite to ask questions to.Another text which is studied belongs the famous architecture historian and is named ?Bir Rönesans Adamı: Doğan Kuban Kitabı, Book of Doğan Kuban a Reinnessance Man? which is also an autobiographical interview published by İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları in 2007. The interview includes Kuban's views of architecture, planning of İstanbul, condition of modern Turkey and many different other issues along with his life story.An interesting aspect of Kuban's autobiographical interview is his usage of this technice to investigate his own mind to construct his story from pieces of memory and information. He often does this with and architectural historian attitude and rigour. Whenever he reaches the limit of his memoru or the documents he has on a subjects, he concludes it giving any neccacary information so that it can be studied furter in the future.Doğan Kuban uses autobiographical tools to construct the interview into a coherent and consistent life story. He gives title/definitions for the parts of his lif such as "it was my Evliya Çelebi period, stumbling from one city to another" this way he both gives chapters to his story and gives meaning to those chapters concerning the whole. He also uses "turning" points to emphasize that his life story has a direction. The common aspect of Boysan and Kuban's autobiographies is that although Kuban is an academic and Boysan is a storyteller, both lay claim to the role of authority. They consider architects as rational problem solvers and progressors of the society.One of conclusions drawn from written autobiograhies of arhitects in Turkey is that authors establish also institutional or/and class affiliations in the process of establishing their own identities. Establishing an affiliation, for authors, has a meaning both to be included in and to diffentiate. They gain a position of ?man of profession? seen respectful by themselves both by differentiate from the ordinary professionals and by producing their ?similars? in this sense.Affiliations, together with other factors, produce also the social roles of arhitects. Social roles appears with stories which the author of autobiography would rather to tell and his/her positioning himself/herself in these stories. The factor which brings up and epmhasizes the social role can be denominated as the ?voice? of the narrator.When the story which is told by architects has a strong emphasis of affiliation with a moral dignity, the arhitects play a role of role model or ?saint?. This role is overlapping with a type of intellectual, modern ?laegislator? in Bauman's words. Hande Suher is the essentialist example of this role. However, many authors like Boysan, Cansever, Eyüpoğlu and Çil do not avoid undertaking this role. In the context of this social role, the important thing is transcendental reality (rather than individual chocies) and the arhictect speaks ?in the name of? it.