Özet:

Abstract The concept of urban interior, which denotes a space within urban space that in some form becomes private and interiorized, attempts to fill or even construct its conceptual void with the different kinds of content based on dynamism of relationships by transcending boundaries in urban space. The concept produces its meanings in architectural discourse and practice through pursuits concerning “the human” and an interiorized/domesticized life in the urban environment. Looking at why the discipline of architecture feels the need for the concept of “urban interior” and how it fleshes out its content, trying to define the concept and analyzing how it functions constitute the main theme of this study. The study, which traces the evolution of the concept of urban interior which began with its entry into different disciplines and which has been ongoing till today, aims to reveal its semantic repertoire through a research into its etymological and conceptual roots. Accordingly, the conditions of the emergence of the concept of “urban interior”, the epistemic foundation of these conditions and the relationship of this diversified foundation with discursive practices produced in different disciplines are analyzed by the method of “archeology of concept”. To this end, the discursive construct and the particular discourses within are expounded. In line with this axis of research, the study first picks up the evolution of the “public” content of modern urban design imposed by modernity, which has laid the groundwork for the emergence of the concept of “urban interior”. Next, it traces the historical marks, which show themselves in the form of discourse, of the concept that is expanding its content via the accumulations of related or unrelated disciplines and disciplinary discourses. Thereby, in the final section, it tries to analyze how the concept of urban interior space founds its discursive construction with interdisciplinary borrowings through its functions, operations and connections. In historical perspective, due to the disconnection of urban space from the relations between the individual and society, modernism, modern urban planning and policies were brought into discussion with the 6th CIAM Congress in 1947. Modern urban space is unsafe and uncanny. Modern human’s inability to feel at home in the relation with the “modern home”, the condition of alienation in Norberg-Schulz, sheds light on the alienation in urban space as well. The modern world is in turn built on this state of alienation; the city is full of aliens. Is it possible for modern, functional urban space, with its configuration that evades life and human internal experiences, pleasures and desires, with its uncanny space, to be rendered meaningful and for it to retransform into a “place”? What about producing familiarity once again in alienated urban space? “Urban interior” appears as the spatial equivalent to finding “the human” that has been lost in urban space. Departing from the desire to stay home/inside against the uncanny and alien exterior, it is the very urban space itself that is attempted to be rendered safe and reclaimed through domestication. These discourses, by which the public quality of urban space is questioned through sub-concepts such as definable, livable and safe, have evolved towards discussing urban space in its psychological and perceptual dimensions that produce belonging and familiarity that render it “room-like”, make it behave “home-like” and produce a feeling of “coming home”. On the sociological axis, the diversified spatial productions of urban space, such as urban niche, city lounge, urban surface, the community living room etc., appearing with the metaphor of urban room have been tried to be defined by derived words received from interior design. On the other hand, on a conceptual ground where the distinction between interior and exterior goes beyond physical boundaries, the fact that this act of blurring the interdisciplinary boundary performed by the discipline of urban design has gone beyond the traditional and complementary relationship that the concept of “interior space” (now defined as more than the opposite of exterior space) has formed with other disciplines has enabled a new debate. This rhetorical transformation has produced a hybrid field of application at the intersection of urban design and interior architecture. Different disciplines construct the content of the concept of “urban interior” differently and with their definitions that sever the concept of space from physicality and that discuss interiority beyond boundaries, base their discourses on dualities. The concept, which is trying to find its place in various intersections by means of dualities such as interior/exterior, individual/ social, private/public, formal/informal, temporary/permanent and physical/perceptual in order to transcend conceptual boundaries, necessitates breaking the traditional relations between these structures of duality. Therefore, the importance for future studies of a polylectic conceptualization which pushes for rediscussing the vague meanings, boundaries, premises and operation of the concept is evident.

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