From Garden-City to Garden Left-Overs

From Garden-City to Garden Left-Overs

Spatial Appropriations in the Gardens of Bahçelievler Neighbourhood, Ankara, Turkey

Created by "Yedek":

Deniz Altay Kaya: [email protected]

Kayahan Kaya: www.kayahankaya.net

Evren Özesen: www.evrenozesen.com

Esin Sarıca Özesen: http://esinsarica.tumblr.com

Yeşim Paktin: http://yessek.tumblr.com

Exhibition at Cities Methodologies, 28-31 October 2014

Lecture by Deniz Altay Kaya, 29 October 2014 // 18:00-19:00

UCL Urban Lab at the Slade Research Center, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0HB

“From Garden-City to Garden Left-Overs” exhibits the findings of a research, which inquires the way gardens of apartment blocks are used, appropriated and reclaimed by the residents in an early republican era (1938) housing cooperative in Ankara, Turkey. The project aims to reveal the significance of the gardens that are left from the housing cooperative, for its users and the city today.

The cooperative was named after its gardens and built with the idea of a ‘garden-city’; but it has been losing most of its garden spaces due to transformation and redevelopment processes. Today many of the gardens of the neighbourhood had already been taken over by commercial establishments or turned into parking areas, as the low rise houses redeveloped into higher apartment blocks in time.

The gardens that are left are now susceptible to a new wave of transformation motivated by the recently introduced ‘regeneration’ legislation.

«This garden is also a rehabilitation center.» Bahçelievler resident

The ‘left-over’ gardens are yet of a particular use to the residents. The remaining gardens of what was once a garden city are appropriated by the residents, with the help of used or self-made furniture to create socialising and breathing spaces. By documenting and analysing these usages in the gardens of Bahçelievler, the project aims to signal to the threat of losing the available gardens and the life that takes place in them. The research therefore highlights the loss of shared spaces and green elements within the current urban development and regeneration trends in Turkey.

The project has inspired from certain factors:

The shared concerns about the regeneration implementations in Turkey. A breaking point had been experienced in terms of regeneration implementations during the last couple of years, which initiated micro-level, parcel-based redevelopment in districts with old building stocks. 

The urge to document as much as possible before the transformation ends. As buildings, gardens and the life that takes place in them will leave their place to something else. An urban environment lacking green, identity and memory.

How do we want our cities to be in the future? Don’t we care about trees, plants, and gardens anymore? In 2013, in the demonstrations and resistances that initiated against the redevelopment of the Gezi Park into a shopping mall complex, triggered with the removal of a tree, showed the discontent of people against this dominant rent-oriented development mentality and urban policies.

So, our observations and concerns had come together with a personal experience, as the house of one of our team members had entered into redevelopment process.

«Now if urban regeneration happens, there will be nothing left from all those gazebos. They will built car parks.» Bahçelievler resident

In 1930s, Ankara was facing a severe housing shortage. While the government was blind to the shortage, newspapers had already named the “housing crisis” and started discussing it.

Open discussion series on what should be the typology of the residential environment that people should live in, was conducted in one of the major magazines of the time. Many professionals contributed to that discussion comparing detached houses to apartment blocks. This ‘Nation’s Survey’ resulted in the opinion that detached houses are what our cities should be composed of. However, due to the scarcity and expensiveness of urban land apartment blocks were already being constructed in Ankara.

«In that place you see at the back, there were innumerable fruit trees....When the fruit time comes, all the neighbours are invited. Fruits are collected all together and shared.» Bahçelievler resident