Abstract

In Turkey, the Public Housing Development Administration, or TOKİ, plays an important role in developing new housing policies for middle- and low-income families. Although this agency offers proposals for the solution of housing problems in large urban centers, those proposals demand highly fixed and standardized plan types that ease the mass production of building. Such an approach is reluctant to take the human body and its continual dialectic with the environment as a basis for the formation of the design. Keeping this relationship in mind, the present study explores the Turkish illegal self-made housing type known as the “gecekondu” as an alternative to the excessively reductionist manner seen in TOKİ housing projects. The gecekondu has its own principles for creating space, which take direct bodily and social encounters with the environment as the main reference—instead of limiting itself to mere visual material such as “form.” Hence the gecekondu is a modern example that continues the inherited social culture from the past in contemporary cities. Within this framework, the gecekondu would be a model for the question of how to create a more communicable environment and urban fabric while providing a more negotiable ground between past and future. This article will analyze two gecekondu examples from the Mamak district in Ankara, Turkey. The stories of the gecekondu builders and their experiences in the construction process of those gecekondu buildings will be the main material.