Kentsel bellekte kopukluk: Ankara şehir merkezinde terk edilmiş sağlık yapıları

In the past few years, Ankara has become the arena of countless renewal projects that have resulted as a loss of continuity in the urban space. A recent example to that is the closure of numerous well-established, still functioning and well-distributed public healthcare structures in the center of Ankara. These buildings were evacuated in 2019 due to the establishment of Ankara City Hospital in Bilkent which is the new healthcare site of the city. As a result, vital points of healthcare service in the inner city have lost their function and the structures have become vacant. This thesis argues that those healthcare sites are significant in terms serving the city for decades. These artifacts occupy a considerable part in the everyday life of citizens; they possess multiple collective experiences and spatial practices. Furthermore, they are also representatives of the architectural culture of their own periods. Therefore, their endurance is essential and they occupy a considerable place in the collective urban memory. This thesis problematizes these closures in a negative sense and regards them as huge interventions in the urban space. Their abandonment generates a discontinuity on the urban sustainability which will inevitably lead to a rupture in urban memory. Thus, this study emphasizes not only the architectural value of these structures but also their complex and intertwined relationship with the city: Their vital place in our daily life, habits, and urban memory.