The Kleinstadt as a Model for the Modern City. The Case Study of Saraçoğlu Residential area of P. Bonatz in Ankara

Abstract

Ankara is located in Anatolian plateau of Turkey, marked by the river of the Su il Enguri and an uninterrupted stretch of steppe. The Ottoman fabric clings on a rocky hill and the city at the beginning of the twentieth century was dispersed at his feet without identity. Here in 1944 P. Bonatz (1877-1956) builds Saraçoğlu residential area in the southern suburbs. Bonatz perfected with the forms of architecture a sense of space related to the german idea of Kleinstadt, in which the small city establishing a new relationship with the existing city and the characters of nature. The area is articulated by double architectural principles. On the one hand recognize and give value to the orographic structure of the horizontal plane on the east side and of the slope hill on the west, according the architecture to the beauty of the landscape. On the other hand determine the relations between the facades of the houses on the streets and courts, to define the sense of domesticity and community through the search of a language refunds techniques and forms of housing tradition. The district consists of 75 buildings and 435 apartments built with load-bearing structures in concrete and wall in local stone, in addition to a school and a ministry building. The houses are aligned along three axes in north-south direction and set the polarity of the system in the square on the hill. The language relies by two aspects of Turkish culture as the roofs protruding from the wide eaves, wooden balconies and narrow windows high on a wall simply worked in plaster. The closed form of the residential area offer a settlement model that moves from the idea of the garden city, present in the plan of Ankara by H. Jansen, to face the problems of the modern metropolis.