Living Apartment Buildings in Ankara and Their Relation with the City
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Date
2019
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AESOP
Abstract
Innovative buildings, with their design aspects, functions and environmental relations, can enrich urban areas spatially and functionally. This study explores inner-city apartment buildings in Ankara that adapted a similar approach to Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation (dwelling unit), and analyzes how they have contributed to their surrounding area. Le Corbusier's approach to city planning involved geometric forms. In his works on city planning, dwelling is the fundamental element. One of his well-known contributions in this regard is Unité d'Habitation. Besides its architectural features, a remarkable aspect of this model is its communal spaces. It is more than an apartment building; where he emphasized a communal lifestyle along interior streets and on the roof. The emptied ground floor and roof garden allow a social environment for users, and these spaces interconnect with nature. A similar approach was adapted by a few cooperative housing initiatives in Ankara during the 1950s-1960s period. It was a period when cooperative housing was largely implemented to respond the housing need of working population. The examples in Ankara are still well-known with their architectural styles and functional aspects. This study focuses on some of them, designed and constructed in the same period. It analyzes the morphological and functional features at street-scale. The study does not propose this approach or similar ones as a solution to all contexts, but it highlights how an architectural approach can interrelate to the urban level with its communal spaces, and open areas at ground and roof levels, and contribute to urban life in spatial and functional terms.
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Keywords
apartment building, morphology, street-scale analysis