A STUDY ON CITY CENTER INSPIRED LIFESTYLE CENTERS - TWO EXAMPLES FROM TURKEY: FORUM BORNOVA AND FORUM AYDIN

Abstract

Globalization is a leading concept which has become the main factor in everyday business during the last few decades. As every aspect of life is inadvertently affected by this phenomenon, the very notion of architecture is also influenced with the emergence of new meanings and definitions. The foremost example of such a transition in the field of architecture is no doubt the modern shopping environment. Being one of the initial activities of mankind; commerce and trade first emerged as simple bartering and continued to develop with the invention of money, creating its own public space along the way. Commercial spaces were, at first, simple gathering spaces and were usually located in city centers. Today, however, the typical shopping mall incorporates many different functions besides commerce; and as the automobile has become the dominant mode of transportation, malls have left the city center, and migrated to the city's periphery. However, with the perception that the post-1950s shopping mall did not provide for a healthy gathering space, a new 'perfect city center' was sought. The result of this endeavor is the open-air malls and lifestyle centers. It would not be erroneous to state that at the root of this endeavor lies the yearning felt by society for a vibrant and lively city center the very center which they had forgotten and become alienated to because of the shopping mall. With their gathering spaces, squares, open-air restaurants and cafes, these new open-air lifestyle centers feature a spatial organization resembling to that of the historic agora, forum or bazaar, which was typically located in city centers and patronized by a vibrant, dynamic body of shoppers. Plan-wise, open-air malls depart from the rational, often rectilinear plan type of the typical mall, and emulate the organic morphology of traditional shopping spaces, thus creating a 'familiar' feel. This study aims to build on the acceptance that there is a simple pattern of repetition in the spatial organization of the shopping environment; and that design principles of the open-air lifestyle centers mimic the urban tissue of the city center and its present trade functions. In this manner, the historical evolution of the traditional spaces of commerce in the Eastern and Western cultures has been scrutinized and the major repeating principles have been set forth. Consequently, these principles have been debated over two lifestyle centers in Turkey, Forum Bornova (Izmir) and Forum Aydin (Aydin) respectively.