Abstract:

The communicative language of the space is full of signs and symbols that construct the narrative of the city. This spatial environment, which has many meanings behind it and conveys messages to us, turns into a social and cultural narrative with our experiences, spatial behavior, cognitive perception and memory. The narrative of the city takes shape not only through functional, social and cultural relations of the architectural space but also by ideological messages. Power interferes with concrete design tools such as form, material, location, spatial hierarchy and monumentality while using architecture and the city as a tool of building ideologies. However, in addition to this, the political authority restructures the space and spatial practices "in language", thus in memory, with the terminology it uses in the definition and place naming (sometimes without even physical intervention). This study is an experimental research on the (re)meaning of the narrative of the city with spatial imaginations. Within the scope of this work; place naming examples are explored under two cases; connotations of commemorative initial names (indicatives) and the semantic of term names that describe type of space / typology; also contemporary examples of place naming in Turkey are examined as a political practice.

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