(Social) Space as (Social) Product

It is necessary to start “rethinking the production of space” by emphasizing that space is produced. Space is not something that “is there” as we unknowingly assume at first glance; it must be produced, and it is produced. On the other hand, we are not strangers to the production of space in the form of land, and certainly not to the production of buildings. The emphasis on production is an economic one in the narrow sense, and expressions such as “build-and-sell”, “urban transformation”, “real estate development” have long since settled into our daily language. At this point, attention should be paid to the emphasis on “social” repeated twice in the title (albeit in parentheses). Social space indicates that space cannot be reduced to the physical, and social production indicates that production cannot be reduced to the economic process. Following Henri Lefebvre’s groundbreaking work The Production of Space, it is necessary to approach space with a dialectical theoretical perspective: space is a phenomenon that interacts with our social relations and is the subject of a production process surrounded by power relations. The talk aims to discuss the structural problems of our urbanization style by approaching the development dynamics of Turkish cities within this framework.

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Bülent Batuman completed his architectural education at Middle East Technical University and received his PhD in the history and theory of art and architecture from the State University of New York – Binghamton. He worked at Mersin University for a while; currently he is a faculty member in the Departments of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture and Architecture at Bilkent University. He teaches courses on urban design and cultural politics of modern urbanism. His research interests include the social production of the built environment, the theory and history of modern architecture and urbanism, and urban politics. His recent work has focused on the relationship between political Islam and the built environment. He was a visiting professor at Pennsylvania State University. He served as a board member of the Chamber of Architects and the Council of Architects of Europe. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Urban History and Praksis .

Her published books: The Politics of Public Space: Domination and Appropriation in and of Kızılay Square (VDM Verlag, 2009), The ABC of Architecture (Say, 2012), New Islamist Architecture and Urbanism: Negotiating Nation and Islam through Built Environment in Turkey (Routledge, 2018; translated into Turkish as Milletin Mimarisi: Yeni İslamcı Ulus İnşasinin Kent ve Mekan Politika and published by Metis in 2019), Kentin Süretleri: Mekan ve Görsel Politika (Dipnot, 2019), Cities and Islamisms: On the Politics and Production of the Built Environment (ed., Routledge, 2021), The Urban Refugee: Space, Agency, and the New Urban Condition (ed., with K. Kılınç, Intellect Books, 2024).