Gezi Park: Architecture and the Aestheticization of Politics
Within a few years, rapidly growing Istanbul will overtake London and Moscow as Europe’s largest metropolis. Not coincidentally, Turkey is undergoing a profound shift toward privatization, as seen in the government's plan to redevelop Taksim Gezi Park into a shopping mall with a nostalgic Ottoman facade. On Places, architect Pedro Levi Bismarck examines the plan as a reflection of a larger democratic crisis, following Siegfried Kracauer’s observation: “Wherever the hieroglyphics of any spatial image are deciphered, there the basis of social reality presents itself.”
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