Architectural Ideas — Onurcan Büyükkalkan

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Midwestern Prairie and Anatolian Bozkır

Both Midwestern Prairie and Anatolian 'Bozkır' present us with flat grasslands, not much tree cover, temperature highs and lows, and all 4 seasons vividly lived through. Some architects of the late 19th century and early 20th century have centered their styles around these features of the Midwest of the United States, less so of the Bozkırs of the Turkic World . I have been struck by the missed opportunities of what would have been if Mimar Kemaleddin and Frank Lloyd Wright , both of whom lived about the same era, met. I had the opportunity to closely analyze their magna opera and needless to say the philosophies of these two architects had instantaneously clashed in my mind. I will not go into much detail about these architects' lives but you will see some personal and zeitgeist induced traces on the philosophies of these architects.

Prairie School Meets Anatolian-Turkic Architecture: A Quick Comparison

The flat connection to the outside world, to the soil and the grass matters a great deal. Wright seamlessly blends indoors with outdoors, eliminates cluttery spaces that block you from accessing "the outside" like a closed off garage or a patio. You walk out of the living room and there you stand on grass. No pools or other unnecessary outdoor furniture. The nuance is that the outside is not necessarily a space that is accessible by the public, it is the household's private outdoors. Much similarity can be observed in a traditional Anatolian-Turkic House. The sense of privacy had been present with closed of courtyards/atriums. Nevertheless the yearning for the connection and proximity to the outside persisted alongside this need for privacy.

Materials reveal and interesting overlap as well. Prairie houses were made of earth colored brick, wood, stucco (also very common in Italian/Tuscan houses as far as I observed in Italy ) , and some stones. These materials are out of natural elements, continuously growing rather than rarely formed or manufactured. Traditional Anatolian-Turkic houses, though they were shaped by different climates, economies, and crafts, were made with similar vernacular logic. This involved wooden frames, stone bases, plaster, and locally available smaller materials. It gives me sorrow that the modern buildings in Turkiye failed to draw from the organic principles.

Flatness matters a great deal. The Prairie school emphasized horizontality with long rooflines, extended eaves, terraces, and cantilevered forms that visually reflected the endless reach of the Midwestern plains. But err not, this was no decoration. This was the architecture speaking the language of the land. One can also imagine a parallel Anatolian-Bozkir architecture doing something similar. Lower and more grounded silhouettes, broad sheltering roofs, deep cantilevers against sun and snow, and emphasis on horizontal continuity rather than vertical display. Such an architecture would not just imitate Wright, but meet him on the shared values of geographic and emotional terrain, translating the openness, austerity, and seasonal drama of the bozkir into a distinctly Turkic modernism.

Vacancy is essential, furniture is exception. Two different lineages and almost no shared history, still the living room designs converged to this same pillar. Turks traditionally sat on firm cushions and had their meals, conversed and rested around an elevated table in a room where the height of the ceiling is proportionate to an average human. Utilizing lower furniture, Wright also spares vertical space to allow for more air and more light, and more space for the occupant to feel the space and feel free.

An early 20th Century Anatolian-Turkic Room

Pope-Leighey House by Wright (1940)

Wright imagined the living room to be active and center of life. Which is why we see the dining room, fireplace, bookshelves, sometimes even a piano are all located in the same continuous space with almost no interruption. Anatolian-Turkic architecture and traditional yurts also present a similar philosophy. The life is active around "Hayat" which literally translates into "life".

Critics thought Wright the reason Wright designed claustrophobic entrances and then spacious rooms that follow because Wright first compresses you to your true size and then releases you to feel smaller in a bigger room. I disagree. My counterargument is that this compression is a way of transforming your environment from the outside world to your inside world. You are separated, or almost pulled away from the outside world, but then put into your own inside world which incorporates an outdoor space that is your own as a family. Ever wondered why walking in Bryant Park, surrounded by massive buildings fel t kind of "nice", "safe" and "relaxing"?

Why Do These Old Designs Make You Feel Better?

Now that we have drawn parallels and established the hyper-similarity of these two approaches to organizing the physical self, we may move to exploring why such design choices make most people feel better about their living environments.

Nature and Organic Architecture

Both styles emphasize a horizontal blending with the nature. Moving in unison with the nature, not contradicting it, is at the core of this philosophy. Such sense of belonging reduces the urban stress most experience today. Wright in his work "The Living City" emphasizes the natural evolution and movement of humans to be horizontal/flat. This is a notion that challenged me to rethink skyscrapers. I don't think Wright would innately oppose skyscrapers, but such buildings that are designed for the sake of height only do not commonly capture or pay tribute to the horizontal essence of the human nature.

What these traditions understand especially well is that people do not experience space only as shelter, but as a psychological extension of the self . A dwelling that opens laterally, frames the horizon, and offers a direct relation to soil, air, light, and seasonality tends to calm the inhabitant rather than overwhelm him. The human body is not built to live as an abstract unit stacked indefinitely in the sky, cut off from ground, weather, and organic rhythm. When architecture acknowledges this, through courtyards, terraces, low rooflines, natural materials, and gradual transitions between inside and outside, it produces not only beauty but reassurance. One feels placed rather than stored.

This may also explain why such environments often feel more humane even when they are simple. Their comfort does not come merely from ornament or luxury, but from proportion, legibility, and belonging. In both Prairie and Anatolian-Turkic traditions, the home is not a sealed machine for living but a mediator between person and landscape. The result is a quieter architecture, one that reduces sensory aggression and gives daily life a more grounded dignity.

Why are These Styles not so Widespread?

Denstiy economics and industrialized building systems in addition to design schools' taste shifted the market toward a more reproducible apartment block. Prairie/Anatolian logic loses to floor-area yield, standard details and financing templates.

Rapid Urbanization in the 1920s and 1930s

As cities densified, single or low rise courtyard houses became inefficient. Perimeter blocks and early apartment houses delivered far more rentable floor area per meter of street frontage.

Reinforced concrete and brick infill scaled faster than timber and bespoke built-ins.

Spread of International Style and Minimalism in 1970s

By the mid-20th century, and especially by the 1970s, architectural taste had shifted toward the International Style, later merging with more stripped-down forms of minimalism. The ideal building was increasingly seen as universal rather than regional: clean lines, repetitive grids, glass, concrete, and standardized plans replaced locally rooted spatial languages. In this environment, Prairie and Anatolian domestic principles came to seem old-fashioned, sentimental, or too tied to place at a moment when professional architecture was rewarding abstraction, neutrality, and visual efficiency.

This shift was also institutional. Schools of architecture, large developers, and public authorities preferred systems that could be taught, copied, approved, and financed at scale. A courtyard house, a deeply articulated roofline, or a plan carefully shaped around climate and family life required more judgment and specificity. A slab block or apartment tower, by contrast, fit the logic of modern bureaucracy and industrial construction far more easily.

Economic and Practical Reasons

There were also blunt economic reasons for the decline of these approaches. Low-rise, horizontally spread houses consume more land, and land in growing cities became too valuable to use generously. Developers, municipalities, and lenders increasingly favored building types that maximized units, simplified infrastructure, and reduced custom design costs. The market rewarded speed, repeatability, and calculable returns, not the spatial subtlety of organic or vernacular domestic traditions.

At the same time, everyday life itself was changing. Smaller households, mass migration to cities, changing labor patterns, and the demand for quick housing production all pushed architecture toward compact apartment living. What was lost in this transition was not only a set of forms, but a way of understanding habitation: one that treated the house as an interface with nature, privacy, family rhythm, and local culture rather than merely a container for residents.

A Fusion: What Features to Pick?

Horizontality

Horizontality is a way of keeping architecture close to the land, the horizon, and the human body. Both the prairie and the bozkır suggest buildings that extend outward rather than rise only to impress. In cities, this can mean stepped blocks, long terraces, and street walls that preserve human scale. In rural areas, it means buildings that sit on the land gently and do not overpower it.

Open Space

A home should breathe. Both traditions value direct access to open air, light, and greenery, whether through gardens, yards, or semi-open thresholds. In cities, this can be translated into inner courts, shared greens, balconies that actually work, and ground floors that open outward. In rural areas, it means preserving the immediate relationship between the house and its outdoor life.

Natural/Organic Materials

Brick, timber, stone, plaster, and other local materials age with dignity and tie a building back to its geography. They make architecture feel rooted rather than artificially imposed. In cities, this does not mean rejecting modern methods, but softening steel, glass, and concrete with warmer, more tactile materials. In rural areas, local material traditions should not be abandoned in favor of generic construction.

Courtyards or the "Hayat"

The courtyard, or hayat, is one of the strongest spatial ideas in Anatolian domestic life. It creates privacy without isolation and openness without exposure. That logic still matters. In cities, it can survive in shared courtyards (like the "Hof" in Germany, or the block parks in New York City like Bryant Park), inward-looking housing clusters, and semi-private communal spaces. In rural areas, it remains one of the best ways to organize daily life around climate, family, and seasonal rhythms.

Ornation in Stone and Wood

Ornament should not be random decoration but a sign of care, craft, and cultural memory. Stone carving, wood detail, and subtle patterning give warmth to a building without turning it into excess. In cities, this can appear in facades, entrances, railings, and interiors without much cost if done selectively. In rural areas, it can continue vernacular craft traditions in a more disciplined modern form.

Simplicity and Warmth in Furniture

Furniture should feel calm, useful, and grounded. Simplicity does not have to mean coldness. Built-ins, natural textures, soft colors, and solid craftsmanship create interiors that feel humane rather than disposable. In cities, this is especially important because smaller homes need peace and clarity. In rural areas, it allows interiors to remain modest but deeply livable.

What matters is not copying old forms literally, but carrying their values into the present. Modern cities still need privacy, greenery, warmth, and human scale. Rural areas still need dignity without kitsch. A real fusion would take lessons from vernacular Anatolia, the Prairie School, and well-designed places elsewhere in the world, then translate them into contemporary life without losing their soul.

A Fusion ist: Sedad Hakki Eldem

If Mimar Kemaleddin represents an earlier search for a national architectural language through Ottoman and Seljuk forms, Sedad Hakkı Eldem represents a more modern and analytical continuation of the same problem. Eldem’s concern was not simply to decorate modern buildings with historical motifs, but to treat the traditional Turkish house as an architectural grammar: wide eaves, shaded façades, modular windows, semi-open thresholds, local materials, and a careful balance between privacy and openness. In his 1939 Arkitekt essay “Millî Mimarî Meselesi,” he argued that a national architecture should emerge from the life of the people, the skills of local workers, and the climate and materials of the country. This theory was visible in his Turkish Pavilion project for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, published the same year in Arkitekt, where Eldem translated the memory of the Turkish house into a modern national exhibition building.

Sedat Hakkı Eldem, “Millî Mimarî Meselesi,” Arkitekt, no. 105–106, September–October 1939, 220–223.

Adapting to 21st Century Urbanism and Urban Planning (To be completed)

Public Spaces and Art Deco?
Vertical-Horizontal Living and High Rises Why not stack mansions on top of each other?
Why not stack mansions on top of each other?
Affordability A good urban life is what everyone needs.
A good urban life is what everyone needs.
Technology How do we make humans more comfortable with less?
How do we make humans more comfortable with less?

New Generation Turkic Architectural Design Proposals (AI vibed, far from my imagination, still useful)

Rural Single House

Low Rise Design

Mid-Rise Design

More Information About the Evolution of the Turkish House

Details about Hayat, the scale of the rooms, facilitating untangible tradition etc.