PRODUCTION OF SPACE IN THE POST EARTHQUAKE REGION

August 17th and November 12th Marmara Earthquakes resulted with the loss and injury of human life and the destruction and damage of the constructed and natural environment, and a ‘need’ for housing emerged. The immediacy of the situation and the extent of the housing need rendered this incident significant and made the state intervention into housing certain. But in the political aftermath of the earthquake the national and local governments were subjected to unprecedented criticism, and moreover the citizens lost their faith in the housing industry and its set of actors. In addition, when the government proved to be inadequate in providing the basic housing units, the victims of the earthquake proposed alternative solution either as individuals or as different kinds of organizations.

Architecturally, this specific context in which the study unfolds suggested architects two main objectives. First, there was the destructed environment, which revealed many of the long-standing problems related with architecture in our cities and a response from the profession was needed. On the other hand, the disasters left many people homeless and public and private agencies started a construction phase to meet the necessary need. Consequently, situated in the middle of destruction and construction, this incident imposed on architects both a “concerns about ends” and “questions about beginnings”. In the given circumstances in which a familiar present was lost into the past and a future waited to be planed, from where should we start in the action of making something?

The differing attitudes and orientations in the construction of the residential environments in Düzce after the two unsettling earthquakes that took place in 1999 are believed to provide a study field, where the relationship between architecture and different economic, political and cultural structures that constitute civil society can be examined. Against this backdrop, our discussion will concentrate on the specific housing concerns and solutions proposed by three different groups, namely: ‘Solidarity Houses Project’ realized by the villagers of Gölyaka, settlement proposal for Gölyaka prepared by the Project Implementation Unit of Prime Ministry  and the struggle of the Düzce Depremzedeler Derneği for tenants’ rights.

Rather than a static perspective, we have organized the presentation along three scales representing three spheres of social organization: individual tactics, strategies of the governmental institutions and empowerment of civil society. Through these examples it is possible for us to question the relation between the contemporary architectural practices and the ‘unrepresented’ and the ‘invisible’ parts of our societies, where the conditions of visibility depend very much to the power relations.  Unless we attempt to understand this basis, architects will continue to quietly design for the same patronage and cannot claim autonomy from the standards set out by the sources of finance and power. For that reason, we believe that an examination on the proposed attempts of housing for low income families built after the 1999 earthquakes might mark a contribution not only to this part of our population but to our conception of the profession as a whole.