Ethical and aesthetical judgement in open urban space: The case of Taksim Square

Abstract

Ethical and aesthetical theories intertwine in a way to approach aesthetical content individually and according to the whole it contributes to. In this way, the unity of ethics and aesthetics helps to understand the relationship between the parts of the urban environment, and the whole environment consisting of these parts. Fragmented architectural and urban design practices in the part of the cities lead to aesthetical and ethical discontent of the urban environment with the presence of aesthetically 'ugly' and ethically 'wrong' urban structures and places. These interventions endanger the meaningful unity of the urban environment, disrupting the balance between the parts and the whole. Herein, the definition of 'ugly' and 'wrong' differs according to changing perspectives and subjective judgements of the people. However, responsive cohesion theory offers an ethical basis for the evaluation of aesthetic content of built environment, establishing a bond between the judgements of 'ugly' and 'wrong'. The main approach of the theory depends on the responsiveness of the urban structure to the existing structures of the place as well as the harmony provided by the whole environment. In this way, newly added urban structures are evaluated according to their communication with the existing physical, functional and symbolic pattern of the environment they are a part of. Therefore, according to responsive cohesion theory, ethical fallacies about urban environment are caused by the imposition of urban structures that are not responsive to the existing pattern of their environment and reflect a 'discohesive' attitude. Moreover, such interventions are not only resulted with negative ethical judgments, but also cause aesthetic displeasure in public, who has no chance but to live with them. The main objective of the thesis is to inquire Radford's (2012) argument that people are aesthetically pleased when they relate responsive cohesion, ever firstly presented by Fox (2000), in, around and with the urban structure or place. This argument not only makes a connection between ethical and aesthetical judgements towards the urban environment but also enables to approach the subject on different scales including the individual structure, individual structure with its immediate surroundings and the whole environment with the individual structure. In this regard, the thesis firstly gathers the ethical fallacies based on responsive cohesion theory mentioned in the existing literature, both in architectural and urban scales and proposes a holistic framework for the aesthetic evaluation with an ethical basis. To fulfill the abovementioned objectives and question the proposed framework, the case area was selected as Taksim Square, one of the most important public places of Istanbul. Taksim Square as the case area provides a convenient environment about ethical and aesthetical evaluations by witnessing many demolitions as well as fragmented urban interventions in history. In addition, leading many ethical and aesthetical criticisms, the construction of Taksim Mosque and AKM Building in last year allows to question fragmented urban interventions within the scope of responsive cohesion theory. Therefore, the thesis observes the relationship between responsive cohesion quality and aesthetic judgement, covering the architectural and urban scales over these two new interventions on Taksim Square. In this regard, a questionnaire is conducted with 111 people to observe the relationality of ethical and aesthetical judgements in architectural and urban scales. Firstly, to analyze internal cohesion quality of architectural scale, ethical and aesthetical judgements towards individual structures of AKM Building and Taksim Mosque were questioned. Secondly, urban scale analysis regarding contextual responsive cohesion quality is structured over the streetscapes containing AKM Building and Taksim Mosque separately. Findings obtained from the questionnaire indicates two important claims regarding the unity of ethical and aesthetical judgements and differentiation of architectural and urban scale judgements. Firstly, the framework suggested for the analysis of responsive cohesion establishes meaningful and strong relationship with aesthetic judgement in both architectural and urban scales. However, this relationship is observed to be stronger in the case of Taksim Mosque, where there are negative ethical and aesthetical judgements according to the case of AKM Building. Secondly, in both case areas, the judgements about the individual structures are observed to be more positive than the judgements about the streetscape containing the individual structures. In other words, although there are positive ethical and aesthetical judgements towards the individual interventions, aesthetic displeasure arises in parallel with the lower contextual responsive cohesion quality of the structure in urban scale. Undoubtedly, this result is related with the imposition of partial interventions on urban environment without considering the level of harmony established with the existing pattern of the environment. As a final stage analysis, the relationship between contextual responsive cohesion and aesthetic judgement is elaborated over a symbolic approach, with the help of mental maps collected from a reasonable number of survey respondents. This analysis is resulted with the appearance of the two oldest structures of Taksim Mosque, Maksem Building and Hagia Triada Church, on a very few numbers of mental maps. This result indicates that these two historical structures are in in danger of losing their importance on human perception, under the discohesive attitudes and physical and symbolic dominance of the newly added structures to the square. Moreover, the fact that Taksim Mosque appears in most of the mental maps as the first perceived element draws attention to the 'new identity' of Taksim Square that is incompatible with the physical and symbolic pattern in history. In the light of the main findings of the thesis, it would not be wrong to argue that the fragmented urban interventions added without considering the responsive cohesion with the existing pattern of the urban space cause negative ethical and aesthetic response. Such interventions also cause social dissatisfaction from the urban environment, damaging the relationship of the users with the place. At this point, especially public spaces, where the active public life of the people takes place, appears to be very fragile. Especially in recent years, new interventions as representation of ideological and political powers on public spaces cause the deterioration of the relationship between architectural and urban scales, and damage the meaningful integrity of the city consequently. In order to prevent this, individual parts of the built environment should be reconsidered together with the whole environment they contribute to.