From Memory to Space: Reading the Social Memory Traces of the City of Eskişehir Through the Architectural Design Studio

A city where embodies the multi-layered relationship network and is a dynamic organism transformed by individuals-society-city interactions, daily-life practices, and changing social conditions. However transforming process is usual due to the nature of cities, some sharpen interventions may accelerates it. This causes some parts of the cities lose their context, meanings and they are transformed to city fragments which are disconnected from the city whole. Changing relationships and dynamics necessitates new conceptual discourses. Individual memory, collective memory and urban identity are arisen at this point. The collective memory which can not be thought independent from the space necesitates the forgetting with the changes and deformations in the memory. When the urban memory finds its tangible response accidentally in intersection of being dailiness. Eskişehir settlement is developed by the effects of construction of Berlin-Baghdad-Railway in physical, architectural, cultural and social context. After the proclamation of the Republic, railway determined the spatial development of the city. In this way, the railway has become the founder element of the city identity. The city which conserves idential features until the end of 20th century enters into a rapid transformation process in 2000’s. The interventions applied in this process cause that the idential elements of the city are erased from both physical spaces and collective memories. For this reason, the study aims discussing the concepts, ‘collective memory, ‘urban identity’ and via the powerful design ideas, making visible and bringing become a part of daily life of the disappearing urban identity elements and collective memory traces in a studio process with third semester architecture department students. Thus, it is aimed they find a place again in the memories with the spatial and visual codes. The information and evaluations reached in this study are gained from the literatüre research and visuals, models produced in the studio process.