Browsing by Author "Gürel, M. Ö."
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Item Open Access Bathroom as a modern space(Routledge, 2008-07) Gürel, M. Ö.Mundane objects and their everyday practices contain clues to the prevalent ideas and ideals of a society at a certain time; thus holding the power to decipher collective ideologies, contemporary beliefs, social norms and shared values. Bathroom fixtures are such ordinary products of the built environment that seem to be simultaneously insignificant and indispensable parts of daily life. This study is an historical analysis of the bathroom as a social space and of its fixtures as material culture. It reflects ideas and identities around the convoluted notions of modernisation and Westernisation in the Turkish context. It suggests that the values of being modern contributed to the transformation of traditional bathroom practices through spatial mechanisms and equipment. To unpack these values, the study engages the examination of oral histories, literary works, journals and flat plans as well as extant bathrooms. The research shows that the bathroom is a product of global modernity. Mediated through flats, which proliferated as a sign of contemporary living, the Western-style bathroom became the norm while its traditional counterpart became its other. This shift in perception indicates a concern for belonging to the world civilisation in the form of an aspiration toward being Western. A universal idea of modernisation pervades the ordinary domestic space of the bathroom and its everyday practices.Item Open Access Blended learning in design education: an analysis of students' experiences within the disciplinary differences framework(A S C I L I T E, 2014) Pektaş, Ş. T.; Gürel, M. Ö.Blended learning has already become an indispensable part of education in many fields. However, the majority of existing research on blended learning has assumed homogeneity of disciplines. This study suggests that research highlighting disciplinary effects and differences is much needed to effectively develop courses and tools consonant with the characteristics of each discipline. To help close this research gap, this paper focuses on design education and analyses student experiences in a "blended design studio" that combined the Moodle learning management system, live videoconferencing, and social networking media (Facebook) with traditional face-to-face learning (design studio). Students' perceptions of the methods and tools were elicited through structured and open-ended questions and qualitative variations in responses were categorised. Subsequent quantitative analysis revealed that the characteristics of soft-applied fields require customisation in blended courses and educational system designs in several ways.Item Open Access The canon and the void: gender, race, and architectural history texts(Taylor & Francis, 2006) Gürel, M. Ö.; Anthony, K. H.Architectural history books play a significant role in conveying the culture, norms, and values of the architectural discipline to newcomers. In recent years, numerous publications have spotlighted the importance of women and African Americans as critics, creators, and consumers of the built environment. Yet, to what extent is this recent discourse on gender and racial issues included in architectural history texts? And how gender or racially inclusive are they? Are twenty-first-century architectural educators presenting newly uncovered architectural histories from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? Building upon prior research, this article seeks to address these issues by examining history texts currently assigned at fourteen leading architectural schools accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board. In textbooks with multiple editions, we compared relevant information in both earlier and later versions. Our analysis of these history texts revealed that contributions of women remain only marginally represented in the grand narrative of architecture. And for the most part, African Americans are omitted altogether. We challenge authors to reassess the next generation of architectural history texts and suggest ways to do so.Item Open Access Consumption of modern furniture as a strategy of distinction in Turkey(Oxford University Press, 2009-03) Gürel, M. Ö.This study scrutinizes consumption of modern design as a strategy of distinction in Turkey. Conceptualizing taste as an acquired and dynamic medium through which inhabitants build and sustain social relationships, the article examines domestic furnishings as tools for constructing a Western socio-cultural difference from the late nineteenth century through to the 1950s and 1960s. Furthermore, it looks at the structures acting on furniture design and consumer choices. The study explicates the view that architects and decorators promoted a taste reform towards different versions of European Modernism throughout the 1930s and in the mid-twentieth century. The modern emerged as a distinctive element, not just between different classes but also within upper-class consumers themselves. The luxurious hotel projects, particularly the pivotal Istanbul Hilton Hotel, were instrumental in spreading the codes of furniture and for shaping contemporary practices, when the infl ux of US culture had an all-pervading impact, in the post Second World War context. A shift in the dominant taste towards modern designs, the use of synthetic materials, such as Formica, and the advent of new design elements, such as the American bar, revealed a concern for taking part in a new modern identity that reflected cultural competence in the way the West was (re)interpreted.Item Open Access Defining and living out the interior: the ‘modern’ apartment and the ‘urban’ housewife in Turkey during the 1950s and 1960s(Taylor & Francis, 2009-12) Gürel, M. Ö.This study investigates the interaction of women’s gendered identities and performances in the modern middle strata with the new apartment, while complicating the boundary between the legitimizing discourses of modern architecture and ideas around femininity, during the 1950s and 1960s in Turkey. It conceptualizes domestic premises as the inhabitant’s space, where gender roles are formed and performed. Drawing on research concerning the postwar construction of women’s identities and diverse ideas of feminine space in a global context, I examine how the apartment was a place for women, who were conceptualized as Western and happy housewives amid Cold War geopolitics. The study ponders ways in which women negotiated/subverted conflicting expectations of the modern housewife. The apartment mediated powerful discourses on structures of patriarchy and identities, while simultaneously allowing women to define and live out the modern domicile as active agents. It embodied the intermediate space between the concepts of modern and traditional, Western and non-Western, urban and rural, and masculine and feminine.Item Open Access Explorations in teaching sustainable design: a studio experience in interior design/architecture(Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2010) Gürel, M. Ö.This article argues that a design studio can be a dynamic medium to explore the creative potential of the complexity of sustainability from its technological to social ends. The study seeks to determine the impact of an interior design/architecture studio experience that was initiated to teach diverse meanings of sustainability and to engage the participants with refined design applications that used sustainable choices. A teaching scheme that utilised a team of instructors with varying degrees of knowledge and competence in different aspects of the topic, mediated the education of both the students and the instructors themselves. The results were documented through observing the students and, later, a survey of the graduates. The study revealed that this studio experience developed a heightened awareness of sustainability as a multidimensional concept that requires critical thought processes, and greatly influenced the recognition of environmentally responsible design as an imperative in education. The findings also suggested that, ideally, sustainability should be addressed earlier, at lower levels, and needs to be woven into every aspect of a curriculum.Item Open Access “Good fences make good neighbors”: territorial dividers ıncrease user satisfaction and efficiency in library study spaces(Elsevier Ltd, 2016) İmamoğlu, Ç.; Gürel, M. Ö.We were consulted to respond to complaints from library users regarding the lack of workspace in a university library hall during busy periods. A behavior mapping study and a survey involving 78 students suggested that the tables in the library hall were used inefficiently, mainly due to a need for territorial markers. Accordingly, we proposed the design and use of new tables that provided dividers (among other improvements), and this design was implemented by the university administration. Follow-up research with 86 students indicated that the design improvements not only led to changes in seating preference trends toward more efficient use of the study hall, but also increased user satisfaction.Item Open Access Modernization and the role of foreign experts: W. M. Dudok’s projects for Izmir, Turkey(University of California Press, 2018) Gürel, M. Ö.Modernization and the Role of Foreign Experts: W. M. Dudok's Projects for Izmir, Turkey, focuses on Dudok's unrealized mid-twentieth-century projects for Izmir, viewing them within the context of foreign architects’ and planning experts’ entanglements in Turkish modernization. Using recently uncovered materials (scaled drawings, sketches, photographs, notes, maps, and letters) from the Dudok archives at the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam, and Ahmet Piriştina City Archive and Museum, Izmir, Meltem Ö. Gürel opens a window into the postwar era's complex landscape of intersecting local and global architectural cultures. Analysis of these documents sheds light on modernization's ubiquitous impact on architecture and urbanism, and exposes the changing roles of international (i.e., European and American) experts operating in Turkey before and after World War II.