How to balance Modern and Traditional: Comparative studies of architectural discourse in Istanbul and Lisbon in the 20th century

Arsalan Nezhadfard

Key information

Authors:

Supervisors:

Ana Cristina Dos Santos Tostões (Ana Cristina Dos Santos Tostões); Francisco Manuel Caldeira Pinto Teixeira Bastos (Francisco Manuel Caldeira Pinto Teixeira Bastos)

Published in

30/10/2023

Abstract

The thesis explores the approaches of balancing modernism and traditionalism in the 20th-century cities transmitted socio-political issues to the current chaotic age based on the clash of societies' traditional and modern cores. In this regard, the architectural and urban space ought to be the central theme of the research, with a triangle consisting of Time, humans and Place as its' realms. The possibilities for geographical sources of traditionalism and modernity led to identifying the two case studies: Istanbul is the intersection of Asia and Europe, whereas Lisbon is the intersection of Europe, Africa, and America. The hybrid approach between the secondary research and the grounded theory is the thesis methodology. The analysis of case studies in the matter of time exhibited the cyclic and linear manner of time respective to traditionalism and modernism. In contrast, the matter of humans illuminated the dominant, oppositional, mediator, and transitional factors of generations, which approved and even amplified the findings in a matter of time. Given the consideration of the Place, it is possible to conclude that districts are either the dominant representative of modernism and traditionalism or the transitional character, which generates a model like a spectrum in synthesis and deterministically. It is widely accepted that traditionalism and modernism reached diverse points of compromise over time. However, these short-term moments had to be converted to a continuous understanding of the city as a living organism. For this reason, mutualism in architectural and urban discourse could be the roadmap for future cities by adaptively reusing the buildings and, in a broader image, the urban fabrics.