Vol. 33 No. 1 Special Issue, vol. I (2025): Oltre il Novecento. Teoria e prassi per il "Restauro del Moderno"
La patrimonializzazione / Heritagization

Re-Staging Modernism: Competitions, Memory, and the Making of Heritage in Ankara’s Ulus Square

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  • Gunce Uzgoren
Gunce Uzgoren
Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani, Politecnico di Milano
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/rar-19046

Published 2025-12-12

Keywords

  • Modernist heritage,
  • Ulus Square,
  • Architectural competitions,
  • Participatory heritage,
  • Preservation challenges

How to Cite

Uzgoren, G. (2025). Re-Staging Modernism: Competitions, Memory, and the Making of Heritage in Ankara’s Ulus Square. Restauro Archeologico, 33(1 Special Issue, vol. I), 330–335. https://doi.org/10.36253/rar-19046

Copyright (c) 2025 Gunce Uzgoren

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Ankara’s Ulus Square has long represented the spatial and ideological core of the Turkish Republic’s modernization project. Since 1923, the square and its architecture form a layered urban palimpsest of nation-building where competitions played a key role in shaping both the physical and symbolic dimensions. This paper examines two emblematic modernist buildings from mid-century competitions: the Ulus Business Center (1952–53) and the 100. Yıl Shop (1967), once central to the square’s civic and commercial life but now facing obsolescence. In 2022, a new competition for the 100. Yıl Shop site promoted by Ankara Metropolitan Municipality introduced public voting on demolition versus preservation, signaling a shift from technocratic planning to participatory heritage discourse. Through these competitions, the paper analyzes how competitions have acted as mechanisms of both construction and erasure of heritage, revealing the fragility of modernist architecture in politically layered sites.

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