Image1: Representative image of a booth in Cevahir Mall
• Nur Gayretli
If you are rich enough, you can buy a “home” when you are out for shopping at a mall on the weekend. That’s what happened to us last sunday at Cevahir Mall, one of the most crowded malls of İstanbul. Sure we didn’t buy one but while I was still too busy thinking and discussing on the meaning of the home; like any other cheese or meat booth at a mall we ran into this real estate booth saying “smart life, smart investment”.
I had no hope on the project at a first glance. Maybe I was too judgy but I believe the giant rendering of the project standing at the middle of nowhere with bad image quality and multilingual presentation (Turkish, English and Arabic) are responsible for this.
Eventually we started talking to the lady who was in charge. She started to gave us a brief information on the project starting with the location of the houses, I’m sorry, “residences” as she corrected herself, too. The word “residence” basically refers to the place where you live but in Turkish we stole the word without bothering to translate it. In this way, the English word sounded cooler and more important, it refers to a luxurious house now. “With the terrace houses on the top,” she said “there are also garden villas with spa, Turkish bath and gym”. No trouble with that, as long as it is a residence, sure it will have those facilities. What got me thinking was the change of the meaning or just using the words without knowing what they refer to. When I compare those “terrace(d) houses” to the precessor ones in London or the garden “villas” to the Palladio’s or basically to the detached houses, which we can call easily a “villa” in Turkish, what I see is a big baloon full of misused terms flying.
Image 2: The giant rendering, where do you belong to?
As she kept explaining, we found out the distinctive quality of the project was the materials used on the façade. “The façade is fully created out of steel and glass,” she said, “this is an important feature.” Since when, I thought. Yes, steel and glass have been important and shiny new features, but since Industrial Revolution or let’s add, Modernism. On the other hand I’m not against to say “modern” in terms of this project, as long as it has at least one Barcelona Chair in the renderings of like, every room.
“Who is the architect?”, we asked. She didn’t know, “But this is how the ‘exterior’ design look,” she added, showing the giant rendering without a context. (Do people ask “exterior or interior design?” in the rest of the world besides Turkey, when you say you are an architect?)
Image 3: Barcelona Chair
Sure this is not her fault or business, but she said a lot on housing in general today. Additionally, it turned out that the investment company was from Saudi Arabia. So in my opinion, the giant rendering without a context can go anywhere in the world. We took a brochure, two Turkish delights which were the only best things on the booth and walked on; thinking, “you are out for shopping and you end up buying a ‘home’ at a booth”. I’m sorry, a “residence” we would say in Turkish; a luxurious, luxurious residence; nobody knows who invested, who designed, who constructed and it all realised at where for whom. To conclude, as an architect who can look at this in a broader frame, for example in terms of political economy, it is not surprising and still surprising at the same time.
