Once venerated as a source of divine inspiration, generating a sense of wonder and respect in the people they sustain, the vast plains of Central Anatolia still feature an incredible array of geological, botanical, zoological and cultural heritage landscapes. These however, are coupled with extractivist mismanagement, careless expansion, and large infrastructural projects scattered in what is termed “a void” by unseeing eyes.
Konya Closed Basin, a sacred geography since the Neolithic Revolution, is our focus for the third instalment of an ongoing research series on Anatolian sites, based on a graduate course named In Situ: Rethinking Sites in Architecture. In our research, we select our sites based on geographical formations rather than administrative boundaries; prioritize being physically present, in situ; and embrace a polysensorial approach in our observations. After researching Harran plain in 2018, and Kars plateau in 2019, we moved on to Central Anatolia in 2023 to observe the fragile relationship between the land and water in this historically significant landscape.
The title, Terra Sancta, underlines the need for a new sense of the sacred that includes respect for the rights of all beings - organic and inorganic. In our modern day pilgrimage to this ancient landscape, we try to notice, empathize with and be awed by every stone, plant, animal, building and geological formation that come our way - things that were once sacred for the ancient civilizations of Anatolia.
Elif Kendir Beraha, March 2025
Understanding the memory of the landscape and the texture of a place requires engaging not only with the visible surfaces but also with the deeply embedded layers beneath. Since ancient times, the soil has served as both a physical and cultural archive, recording traces of life, transformations, and the interactions between humans and nature.
The visual images captured during the Konya site visit, conducted as part of the In Situ course, evoke associations that open up new ways of rethinking the texture of the land through bio-based material productions. Within the dialectic of place and material, these objects are not merely forms but also narratives conveyed through tactile and temporal layers.
GEO - FLORA
"Those who passed through this plain in the Ten Thousands voyage called it Axyols chora (land without trees). There are no trees in the steppe, but there are hundreds of plant species that hold more abundant and more essential seeds than forest trees." Hikmet Birand, Anatolian Landscapes, 1957.
A world heritage, the beings living in the Anatolian steppes are a source of life for each other. A single individual or a single substance cannot establish a life on its own, a variety of lives can be established with the associations of several different individuals and several different substances. Thanks to the content specific to each place of life, this association develops or differentiates resistant individuals.
We have encountered only around 100 of the hundreds of species in the basin and a few of the dozens of endemic species in situ. Although we cannot live together, the forms, sounds, smells remain in our memory from these encounters - those things by which we are surprised and those we admired - and new images are formed in our minds. On the other hand, with the reaction to the Anthropocene networks that surround the steppe, above and below the ground, that squeeze us, these images are turning into deities and sacred beings of new taboos for Terra Sancta rather than biological beings.
Intimate landscapes is a series of close-up views of the ground taken during our visit to the Konya closed basin. The photographic documentation will act as the instigator for a philosophical inquiry about the act of treading over an entity that has a time scale of its own, which both reveals and conceals the processes within.
Soil Horizons, an intentional pun on the technical term, is a series of 30-second to 60-second videos shot with a hand-held phone camera from inside a minibus on the D-330 motorway cutting through the entire Central Anatolian steppe. Recorded during different times of the day and different weather conditions, this series will feature the vast expanse of industrial agricultural lands, volcanic formations, roadside spring flowers, monoculture plantations, amazing cloud formations and an almost uninterrupted flatness that eventually culminates in the steep incline of the Taurus mountains.
SOUNDCAPES
How do senses beyond vision influence land analysis? How is sound used in land analysis? How do our combined senses contribute to our understanding of spatial relationships? In what ways does this understanding offer insights about the land that visual perception alone cannot? What experience does sound provide along an exploration route with designated stop points, complementing vision?
Within the scope of this research, the exploration route created in the Konya Closed Basin incorporated sound alongside vision, aiming to integrate auditory perception into analysis studies. Experiencing space solely through vision is limited to a linear perspective. However, land encompasses relationships that must be understood in all dimensions. In this context, sound addresses this limitation by providing a three-dimensional interaction.
“Traveling in Anatolia, once you look around with careful, adoptive eyes, you don’t just see the plant cover, you see beyond what is there. Anatolia does not just mean a place (a geography), it means a part of the marching time...” Hikmet Birand, Conversations with the Hawthorn Tree, 1968.