TODAY'S UTOPIA, YESTERDAY'S REALITY
Walking from the ferry dock to Bahariye avenue and then to
Moda, burning with anger because of the dense cluster of buildings you pass through, you come across the building
whose façade is so different from the others. It seems to point higher and higher up with all its elements; paint,
stucco, landing, courtyard, stairs, balcony, dirty chimney. You face KAHEM and leave the anger behind.
It is still standing, the top layer of the receding iceberg, along with the façade of republican ideology and/or the spirit
of the radical spirit.
Along with an allusion to the verticality of 1930's silos and factory chimneys – the towers were meant to surpass
minarets in creating the effect of height, symbolizing secularism’s victory over religion - you witness the powerful
effects of delicacy and length through the horizontal representation of the height and grandeur of the republic's ideals
of production and progress,how it all turns into ‘an inviting screen’ with all its optimistic faith in modernization and
westernization. The horizontal band -designed as a public speech balcony- overlooks the wide courtyard, announces
and disseminates its ideology.
The building was commissioned, as was customary for community centers at the time (the other option would be to
select a local architect and hand the work over to that person), to the winner of an architectural project competition.
In 1938, Architect Rükneddin’s –Rükneddin Güney- project was selected out of 17 entries in the national competition
organized by Kadıköy People’s Party. “The democratic process aiming to discover the structure which would serve
the project of enlightenment” was reason enough to work, debate and create at KAHEM
We wanted to examine our structural problems by looking at its context which which made the building belong to its
location singularly, its modernist language dominated by the machine aesthetic of the 1930s, its structural qualities
and details. We wanted to discuss the social relationships it forges between its administration, users and the city.
What makes it possible for the different groups who use the building – the guitar and bağlama students who use the
same room, the locals who upon exiting the basketball game meet the modern dance students waiting for their class
– to mingle in the common area –the snack shop? What makes the program everyone’s property, allows the building
to be used to its fullest capacity? Is it that it’s well-finished? Is because of its agenda or context? The way it was
obtained or its timelessness? Perhaps all of the above. Or is it that it has managed to stand against speed which is,
as Milan Kundera describes it, the biggest madness the technology revolution has granted humanity.