READING THE FUNCTIONS OF ARCHITECTURAL DISCOURSE THROUGH THE SURVEY OF THE DISCOURSE ON DISASTER WITHIN THE LOCAL ARCHITECTURAL JOURNALS

The purpose of this study is to emphasize the 'critical awareness’ of the ambiguous relationship between architecture and its discursive realm. Although -recalling Foucault’s statement, “There is no non-discursive realm, that everything is constructed and apprehended through discourse”- it is possible to suggest the identity of architecture to be gained through the ‘structural, semantical or communicational nature’ of discursive frameworks, the connection of architecture to the realm of discourse still constitutes a problematic.

Sketchily defining discourse as a ‘functional language’, the argument through the paper will attempt to construct the functions –creative, constitutive, epistemological, and representational- of architectural discourse by means of a Foucaultian reading. Initially, it is essential to underline the productivity and creativity of discursive practice, which creates a ‘center’ and a ‘margin’ taking the role of socio-cultural reproduction in late modern societies. Secondly, discursive structures play a significant role in systematically forming and transforming their ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’, rather than the converse. Thirdly, discourse contributes to the construction of systems of knowledge. As a strategy, it constructs the architectural theory by conceptualizing the realm. In the fourth sense, discourse is a representational practice, that is, it brings phenomena into the scene.

Taking for granted that “the discourse is an actually occurring piece of language whose dimensions are dictated by the situation”, all the utterances –written and spoken- about the earthquake constitute a ‘mega-utterance’, which we can call ‘the discourse of architecture on the subject of earthquake’. Having established the functional task of discursive practices in general, this paper will make a systematic survey of architectural discourse on the earthquake phenomenon as a case study through local architectural journals, namely Mimarlık, Ege Mimarlık, Yapı, Tasarım, XXI, Arredamento Mimarlık, Mimarİst and Batı Akdeniz Mimarlık. In other words, it will attempt to constitute a discourse analysis, which shows how texts work within socio-cultural practice. It will mainly rely on the content of that discourse including “the technical reasons of the damage caused by earthquake in terms of materials, the construction type and the structural system and thus a critical approach to the social role of the architect in the disaster and the discussions on the principles of earthquake-resistant architectural designs; the criticism of the politics of the municipalities, and the state as well, in terms of land-use decisions and post-earthquake applications and thus the transformation of a natural disaster to a cultural one; the temporary and permanent housing problematic and their place in our design culture and their discussion as a representational space in terms of ideology and the phenomenon of participation as well; the influence of the earthquake phenomenon on architectural education and the provocative and productive power of the earthquake on architectural discourse as the organization of competitions, summer schools, panels and symposia; the informative discourse about the nature of earthquake” and the potential of this content to function in relation to the above-mentioned roles of a discursive framework.