The book titled “The Time Regulation Institute,” published in 1961, one
year before Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s death, is a novel that ironically fictionalises
Turkey’s modernisation process. Based on clocks, the novel employs a symbolical
language and makes a critique of time through changeable and unregulated clocks. In
this context, the study aims to evaluate the novel from the point of time and space in
the old/traditional and new/modern intersection, which constitutes the main theme of
the novel. Initially, the prominent spaces in the novel are evaluated from an
architectural angle. Then, we attempted to analyse critically how the aforementioned
spaces underwent a change and transformation with modernism.
As a reflection of society and culture, architecture has lost its identity with
modernisation. Concepts such as space, function, form, and aesthetics are
unquestionably for the structure to have an architectural value, but these concepts
change and transform according to time and conditions, too. In this context, the novel
offers an important point of view to present and future architects on how to adopt a
“responsible” and “sensitive” architectural approach, which is ignored today. The study
also aims to reveal the effects of modern life on individuals’ behaviours, their
belongings, social behaviour, lifestyles, family structure, and institutional relations, as
well as in architecture.
Keywords: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Architecture, Change, Cultural
sustainability, Halit Ayarcı, Hayri İrdal, Individual, Istanbul, Modern,
Modernisation, New, Old, Social change, Society, Space, The Time Regulation
Institute, Time, Tradition, Transformation, Turkey.
