MODERN INTERIORS IN TURKEY SYMPOSIUM II

June 13-14, 2022

Yaşar University, Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design

 

Established in 2019 as a subcommittee of the docomomo_tr National Working Group, the Interior Space Committee aimed to create a comprehensive and widely participatory sharing environment that would play an active role in better understanding and preserving modern interiors with the "Modern Interiors in Turkey Symposium" event, first held in 2020.

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Modern interiors offer a multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary problem area for a better understanding of the social, cultural, artistic, aesthetic, and ideological aspects of the modern movement in Turkey. This area manifests itself sometimes within the physical boundaries of the interior space and sometimes in urban, regional, and global contexts that transcend these boundaries, through modernist discourses and representations. Interior design is an important practice that enables experiencing and understanding modern spatiality, ideology, and aesthetics. Therefore, the examination, discussion, and dissemination of design elements and interior design features described as modern play a significant role in expanding and deepening these discourses and representations.

 

Appreciation, understanding, and preservation of the value of modern interiors can be achieved through in-depth research and comprehensive discussions. Discussing concepts such as modernity, privacy, efficiency, economy, comfort, and beauty in daily life and consumption is crucial in this context. To reveal the experience of modernity in interior spaces, to encourage its preservation, and to reflect it in contemporary designs through interpretation, multidisciplinary research and different research methods are necessary.

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As in the rest of the world, there are many cases in Turkey that demonstrate how the modern movement shaped public and private interiors and await in-depth research. Undoubtedly, every current study that sheds light on our recent history in this field will allow us to further decipher the codes of the modernist discourse and movement, enriching our cultural memory and transmitting it to future generations. At the same time, interiors, with their combination of artistic contributions, offer extraordinary resources for understanding the cultural state of an era and the spirit of an age.

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The Modern Interiors in Turkey Symposium II, organized by the Docomomo_Tr Interior Committee and hosted by the Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design at Yaşar University, took place on June 13-14, 2022. Penny Sparke (Kingston University), Zsuzsanna Böröcz (KU Leuven, University of Antwerp), and Bárbara Coutinho (University of Lisbon, Graduate Institute of Technology) participated as invited speakers. The symposium included sessions focusing on various disciplines such as Cinema and Written Media; different building types including Housing, Tourism, Health, Social, Cultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Educational; and discussions on Interior Designers, Domesticity, Hygiene, and Repurposing. Presentations of papers and posters were also given at the event.