Spatial Readings in the Context of Individual Testimony and Evaluations: Ankara Saraçoğlu Neighbourhood as a Place of Memory

Abstract

Space is considered in the literature as having a significant influence on the formation and development of memory. In this context, spatial experiences and the accumulation of knowledge through experiences and reflections on life all play an active role in the generation of both social and individidual memory. In this study, spatial readings and other findings that were obtained by consulting individual testimony of the relations between memory, space and identity were analyzed through drawings and tables. The study focuses on the houses of the Saraçoğlu (Namık Kemal) neighbourhood in Ankara. The neighbourhood is considered as being a cultural property and a place of memory and is studied in the context of the literature by consideration of the place and the people who lived there. A variety of qualitative research methods were used in the study, and the evaluations obtained were used to consider both the past and to reveal future spatial potentials. The most significant result obtained in the study was that the neighbourhood can be considered to be a place that exists in the memories and lives of the residents, and so cannot be examined by considering only the architecture.

Keywords

• space
• memory
• cultural property
• houses
• early republican period
• saraçoğlu neighbourhood
• ankara