Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
LIVable ENvironments & ARCHitecture 6th international congress, Trabzon, Türkiye, 25 - 28 Eylül 2019, cilt.1, ss.15-33
Many concepts such as population growth, economic crises, revolutions,
wars, unemployment, immigration and refugee movements forced the act of
producing architecture, away from its original purpose, into an endeavor to
build characterless and spiritless buildings which are actually incompatible
with the context, isolated from their places, not alive but nonetheless serve as
forced habitats. Within this fact and in reference to the Livenarch-VI’s theme
of “Replacing Architecture”, “the uprooted architects” who are expatriated and
lived abroad, and the buildings they produced are certainly worthy of debate.
In this aim, the proposed paper intends to lead to a discussion within the
framework of the congress, on the architecture of Bruno Taut, who was
considered as a “stateless architect”, and who stayed in numerous locations
including Koenigsberg (East Prussia), Hamburg, Wiesbaden, Magdeburg,
Berlin, (Germany), Osaka, Tokyo (Japan), Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, Trabzon
(Turkey) through years, due to various political, social and economic reasons.
Taut left his mark in every place he lived in, even Turkey, which he often
called “the land of Sinan”. He was an architect “who did not belong to a single
place”, and who had addressed even today as he approached the
architectural problems of his era with specific references to his day. In his
discourses, Taut developed as solutions for existing problems; he discussed
architecture based on the “spirit of the place” and universal solution proposals
for the “replacing architects and architecture”, which arose out of the problems
of the day. Through his opposition to the codification of absolute rules for
construction, he offered different perspectives towards the architectural
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thought of the modern era, and built a synthesis of traditional-modern
architecture. He claimed that architecture is a universal language, that formal
and dogmatic architecture is simply unacceptable in a perspective of
architecture in harmony with the humanity.
With a view to understand and explain Bruno Taut on the basis of “place”,
“emotions”, “spirit” and “essence”, the authors came up with the method of
“production of concepts”. A number of concepts including “background”
(Taut’s design philosophy), “betweenness” (the balance Taut established
between science and art, past and future, transparent and opaque), “openendedness” (Taut’s flexible, creative and legible solutions) and “retrospection”
(Taut’s various spaces which allow and enable the accumulation of memories
on part of the individual) were proposed by the authors. The architectural
perspective that does not require a move to find itself a suitable background,
one that was nonetheless proposed by an architect who did his share of
moving around was discussed with reference to the universal thought system,
principles and concepts considered the legacy of the architect and
architecture.
Key Words: Bruno Taut; Trabzon Lisesi (Trabzon High School); Production of
Concepts; Background; Betweenness; Open-endedness; Retrospection.