Stone walling

Architectural Review, The, Oct, 1997 by Ed Scriptor

Ahmet Igdirligil, a local architect, managed to find one of the few sites as yet innocent of views of the tourist cancer, at Gokcebelen towards the north tip of the Bodrum peninsula, some 15km from the old fishing village that has so roughly exploded into being a coastal conurbation. The place is a rocky valley which leads back into the hills, still with its traditional vegetation, quiet and aroma. Igdirligil is building five houses(*) in the landscape in a way that is intended to preserve the nature of the place and act as a model for future development. Like the other local model housing scheme by Turgut Cansever (AR October 1992), this project draws on traditional forms (for instance the chimneys), materials and craftsmanship, but uses them in new ways.

Houses are built of local stone and timber, with loadbearing walls and flat roofs, so they echo the cubic forms of the traditional farmsteads, though the spaces are rather more interpenetrative than they are in traditional buildings. Each house is different, and planning is much determined by the topography of the individual site and a self-imposed rule that trees should not be cut down. Site infrastructure has been developed by the owners acting in common through the architect; particular houses are of course financed individually by their owners. Though they share the same vocabulary and approach, the two completed houses are quite different, with the smaller one consisting of a single-storey volume locked into a two-storey one; roof of the lower part acts as a terrace for the upper living room, while the taller part shelters the living areas from the (rather quiet) road. The other house is on a plinth which contains a basement, supports the terrace and connects to the detached guest quarters.

Work on the houses is all by hand, both to re-establish traditional craftsmanship and to ensure that vegetation is disturbed as little as possible. The site crew is led by Enver, the last master mason in the area. Most of the stone is found in ruined buildings on the site or quarried locally - but some softer and more easily dressed stone for surrounds of openings and fireplaces was brought down from the hills by camel train.

Clearly, like the Cansever scheme, Gokcebelen is a passionate and sensitive reinterpretation of tradition and response to site; the reawakening and extension of masonry skills may be of benefit to the local community; the planning will certainly preserve (at least for a time) part of the beautiful landscape of the peninsula. Yet is the model replicable, except at large expense? In a sense, the scheme (like the camel train) is a romantic gesture, the defiant act of a critical regionalist, for the coastline of the Bodrum peninsula has almost all been destroyed, and it is perhaps only projects like this that can save what little remains of its original beauty.

Perhaps its planning approach may have some influence on tourist development; perhaps the masons who have learned on the site may be able to mitigate a little the horrors of the concrete cancer. It is to be hoped that Igdirligil will find a client who has the courage to use his sensitivity for place on a denser, less expensive and more conventional programme.

* A sixth has been created by restoring a ruined farmstead.