Spaces of Commonality and Change: Re-constructing Ruins Amongst Cultural Values in Iznik, Turkey

Abstract

Material cultures of past and present societies are increasingly being threatened to lose their sense of place to commodification and dominant powers. Such forces of economy and politics in a globalized world are shaping everyday-life experience and the production of space. The resulting spaces reveal a fragmented social fabric for local inhabitants. However, in a differentiated lived space for production of culture, a sense of place needs to be observed and felt. Through recordings of those observations, experiences and interdisciplinary research in the town of Iznik in Turkey, this thesis seeks to link ruins as living active social agents through an architectural intervention. Architecture in an archeological site therefore does act as the in-between space to produce a collective sense of belonging by engaging in the processes of cultural production.