Modernist Bir İlk Yapıt: Mimar Maruf Önal’ın Dr. Fahrettin Belen Evi

Abstract

The debut work of the architect Maruf Önal (1918-2010), Dr. Belen’s House (1943) is one of the few modernist houses built in Istanbul. Önal, with his modest personality and buildings, was subject of only a small number of publications. This research aims at looking closely into Belen’s House, a building which is small, yet able to capture the typical features of modernist architecture and almost becoming ‘anonymous’. For the architect’s approach offers an opportunity to develop a distinct gaze into the early years of Turkish modernism, within the context of the architecture in the Republican era. The essential dichotomy characterizing this period is told to be between a pursuit of a Western-oriented modernism and a search of cultural, national and historical identity by the new Republican elite. What makes Belen’s house constructed in Viflnezade by Önal quite peculiar is its rationality, devoid of historical, local and cultural references in the context of 1940s dominated by this tension of Turkish modernism. The narrow front facade which gives to the building its peculiar character is almost considered as ‘abstract’. Despite the subsequent negative changes in façade flashing, Belen’s house preserves its ‘timeless’ quality and requires conservation.