A critical evaluation on historicist discourse and practices in today's architecture of Turkey

As in various fields, it is possible to benefit from the accumulation of the past in the field of architecture. The fact that the architectural accumulation of the past is an undeniable fact and the memory of the human beings, makes the effect of the concept of imitation in the field of architecture inevitable. The concept of imitation is used in architecture, sometimes in the positive and sometimes in the negative senses. Because there are architects who are replicating the past as well as architects who reveal the educational and creative aspects of imitation. Imitating architectural elements, structures, images or textures of the past without interpreting may results in similar architectural products. Therefore, it is important to examine the function, fiction, meaning and context dimension of the architectural accumulation of the past in detail and to evaluate them correctly in terms of shedding light on the architecture of the future. Nowadays, the imitation of architectural elements, structures, images or textures of the past with formalist approaches has become an adopted design approach and this has led to the proliferation of historicist structures in our country in recent years. Behind the design of historicist structures, there are discourses such as keeping alive or protection Turkey's national architecture and past, creating identity. İn this recpect it is important to reveal the reason of the increase of historicist structures in today's Turkish architecture and the results of this situation. In addition, the extent to which historicist structures meet the discourses of keeping alive or protection Turkey's national architecture and past, creating identity is one of the issues that need to be investigated. At this point, how the historicist structures were receptioned by architects and non-architect visual users was investigated with the survey conducted within the scope of the thesis. By the evaluation of researches and survey results, the effects of the historicist structures in today's Turkish architecture and visusal users, have been tried to be reached.