Abstract
As the fourth principle of heterotopias defined in Foucault’s controversial yet inspiring text named “Of Other Spaces”, heterochronies define places that accumulate time, as well as temporary spatial formations. This study interprets urban spaces with historical backgrounds, which can accommodate both the accumula- tion of time and the temporariness, as heterochronic urban spaces. This study aims to evaluate the reflection of socio-cultural background of historical neighbourhoods on the morphological and semantic change of their heterochronic elements throughout history. The deconstructive methodology of the study consists of a diachronic research involving three parts: deconstructing, analysing and reconstructing history. By “deconstructing history” through a multi-layered “timeline” developed with important historical thresholds and a “zoning”, morphological or socio-cultural changes and “situations” are defined. “Analysing deconstructed history” involves the syntactic analyses of these “situations” in terms of historically persistent elements and temporary formations, to grasp the morphological and socio-cultural evolution of the heterochronic urban space. “Reconstructing history”, as a synthesis, semantically interprets syntactic findings signalizing accumulations, discontinuities, shifts or losses of meaning. The case study is Kuzguncuk neighbourhood, a heterochronic urban space on the Asian side of Istanbul, an old Bosphorus village, which mainly used to consist mostly of a welcoming and peaceful residential area co-inhabited by Jews, Christians and Muslims, later by Black Sea migrants. The area is gentrified within the last thirty years. The findings of the case study show that Kuzguncuk is one of the heterochronic urban spaces, as well as a palimpsest where a majority of meanings perish, leading to fake re-valuation.
