ABSTRACT
While most social housing projects in Turkey have reproduced smaller and cheaper versions of a common modernist apartment building typology, the “social” aspect has remained noticeably absent. Multistory housing blocks have evoked, if not promised, a middle-class way of life, but lagged behind in providing its minimum standards; neither have they offered collective activities or participatory administrative mechanisms typical of social housing. This chapter examines the Ege Neighborhood Social Housing Project (ENSHP) in the city of Izmir. Built by the municipality (1970) to accommodate a predominantly Roma community in the so-called “Tin-Can Neighborhood,” the project departed from the normative spatial organization of mass housing in Turkey with layouts more open to community life and user intervention. Research findings demonstrate that the gradual appropriation of the project, which has almost seamlessly blended into the texture of the neighborhood, offers insights into the question of how locality and culture can better inform the design of modernist blocks. But more importantly, the chapter highlights the importance of reintroducing this project into the disciplinary memory of architectural history in Turkey as a place of architectural value.
