New York-based Turkish architect Selim Vural, founder of architecture and interior design firm Studio Vural, has shared with us his design for a Gezi Park Monument. The memorial commemorates the recent protests on Istanbul's Taksim Square against the planned construction of a shopping mall in place of the historic Gezi Park — which sparked the nationwide 2013 protests in Turkey (previously on Archinect).
Project Description from Selim Vural:
Beyond commemorating important events, monuments come to being through significant ideas. Their bodies are usually aesthetic, dynamic, communicative and distinctive yet beyond all, they are clear embodiments of their generative ideas.
It is also significant that all monuments of liberty in history are made of or derived from female figures. There is a soft power, an illuminated fearlessness in their stance, which is not evident in the singularly powerful male figures. On the one hand they are complex, conflicting, and plural and on the other they are “blazingly clear” in Le Corbusier’s favorite words, with a harmonizing cognition.
Such is the spirit of millions of Turkish people standing for freedom in Taksim Square in Istanbul, who took it to the streets after peaceful protesters trying to protect Gezi Park against an "illegal government project (!)" were pepper gassed and beaten brutally.
From a western perspective, a revolutionary syringe of Woodstock 69 & Occupy Wall Street cocktail has been injected into Turkish cultural veins, creating an unprecedented moment of social blending and unity. Environmentalists, transvestites, traditionalists, gays and lesbians, farmers, intellectuals, factory workers, university students, veterans among many other have come together in Gezi Park and fought shoulder to shoulder. Transvestites have guarded the square holding hand in hand, so religious protesters could face to Mecca and pray; this is surely a first for Turkey! Gezi Park events were and are (people are on the streets as this text is being written) so fiercely post-modern and complex that it has appalled and dysfunctionalized many government faculties. The traditionalist/oriental government priding itself with economic growth has, unsurprisingly, retreated into a protective shell of denial.
Gezi Park Monument has been conceptualized under the light of such complex forces. It is derived from an abstracted photograph of a female protester and strives to represent all above mentioned layers of society, harmonizing yet not sterilizing their individual identities. The project site is the platform where Gezi Park and Taksim Square meet. Horizontal sustainable concrete platforms merge with the vertical female figure, erecting themselves up towards the boundary line between the park and the square. Below the shell of the monument above, the 12 feet level difference between the park and the square has been utilized to accommodate a museum and a library. A promenade runs through the project and connects the square below, the underground functions and the park above. The concrete platforms function both as a roof scape for the museum and landscaping elements for the park, nurturing a variety of local plants including Turkish hot peppers, under the condition of peaceful consumption.
Gezi Park Monument is the architectural form of a nation's SCREAM, it is loud yet peaceful, plural yet harmonic; it is a woman yet a nation.
8 Comments
Oh no!
This proposal could have been a typical register that inhibits and turns unrehearsed moments into objects and cripples them with the long shelf-life of concrete. Revolutions need their economy of images but how these images come to stand for something and pack in an unusual mass of signifiers are never premeditated. The source material for the monument is a photograph of a woman standing tall against the jet spray shot from the anti-riot vehicle’s water cannon. It is picture perfect the first time you see it, but in each recurrence the image opens up to a voyeuristic gaze. The see-through sexism of the studio’s words about her aside, the abstraction and generalization of the figure into a psuedo-futuristic statue deprives it of any political dimension. The proposal chooses exactly where another monument was planned eighty years ago. The equestrian statue of the second president of the country (“national chief”) was supposed to overpower the square. The park’s relationship to the square, the steps leading to the sizeable clearance seems to have been designed in admiration of Nuremberg rallies. To bring that type of brutal monumentality to the same location reintroduces an autocratic narrative that was not interrupted before the mid-to-late 1970s when the square became home to May Day parades.
Gezi was not “a revolutionary syringe of Woodstock 69 & Occupy Wall Street cocktail has been injected into Turkish cultural veins..,” it does not have to compared, it was its own thing, still reinventing itself each and everyday.
ya mami!
honestly, it looks like something from an aggressive to militarized nationalism. sorry, but now you have opened up an opportunity to make us ponder which is worse, the gentirfying mall or the ba'athist-like monument...
aside, i never understand the silliness of choosing a gender or an age group to trick people into giving more support to one's cause: a rebelling woman, a rebelling child, a young people's revolution. its rather pathetic. am i supposed to feel more sympathetic if that individual has a vagina and a pair of breasts? ok maybe if its a women's right thing...then thats the reason of its being...but not for a reason/concern shared
Good Work-- we likes !!!
good work !!
The biggest problem is all the same flowers....they will bloom they will die.....and nothing will be until the next year.
As the creator of the monument, I would like to respond to Vasif's comments:
The monument is being accused of promoting sexism: It seems that no matter how intellectual these comments try to appear, there is an underlying prejudice ignited by the male ego's intolerance to the liberal stance of the female figure, I am not clear whether this is a cultural or personal problem, yet the commenter needs to realize, in modern cultures women are not oppressed and people's revolutions such as the French or the American Revolutions are embodied by enlightened figures of brave and fearless women, fighting for freedom such as Eugène Delacroix's - La liberté guidant le peuple (liberty leading the people). It may be that the commenter is arguing his country is not a western country therefore women cannot embody freedom, however as the creator of the project, we are free, and entitled to express our opinions through our art.
The project is neither pseudo futuristic (there is no allegory of futurism here) nor political: The commenter does not realize the Gezi Park events are NOT political, they are the beginning of a social revolt.
The commenter rightfully brings forth that there are possibly better ways the monument can open up to the square, we appreciate that comment.
Lastly and most importantly, our monument's monumentality does not represent autocratic regimes, it denounces them by nature through bringing together conflicting and complex morphologies in a unified whole which cannot happen in autocratic systems. One can very clearly see the mutli-layered and disjunctive blocks and striations funneling through the park, blending and merging as they approach the square: and are they monumental? yes they are!!...and that is why we call it "Gezi Park Monument".
Overall, we do appreciate all comments. Thank you.
If you could, It would be wonderful!!
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.