Sila Karatas
Biography
Sıla Karataş (Ankara, 1987) studied architecture and received Master’s degree with the thesis “Building Marshall Plan in Turkey: The Formation of Workers’ Housing Question, 1946-1962” at the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey. She worked as assistant and lecturer in Turkey between 2012 and 2019; took part in architectural and urban design studios as tutor and reviewer, prepared and gave "Case Studies in Social Housing and Community Planning" among other Bachelor's degree courses for architecture students.Her main research interest is history and theory of housing and settlement. More specifically, she investigates diverse institutional archives and personal papers to unearth the forms of transnational practice and intricate agencies of policymaker, planner, architect, contractor, and labour in housing production from policy and program to design, construction and inhabiting in Marshall Plan countries.
In her M.Arch. thesis at METU, she analyzed the postwar workers’ housing discourse on cooperatives as part of the ideological, institutional, social and spatial programming of the Marshall Plan and Americanization in Turkey. This research received Honourable Mention in Young Social Scientists Awards of the Turkish Social Sciences Association (TSBD).
Her Ph.D. dissertation at EPFL concerns Marshall Plan's workers’ housing program applied to prevent communist tendencies and strikes in the participating countries, and analyzes cooperative housing by local labour unions in the participating countries in relation to the transnational activity by the United States and US-led international organizations on postwar development, labour affairs and housing. This research is awarded the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship for PhD and supported by the Swiss Confederation Federal Commission for Scholarships for Foreign Students (FCS).
Publications
Infoscience publications
Journal Articles
2022
From Marshall Plan to “Hilton in the wild”: The Transnational History of a Cooperative Housing Block in Esat, Ankara
ABE Journal – Architecture Beyond Europe. 2022-10-31. DOI : 10.4000/abe.13254.2020
From rational form to industrialized housing: Rationalist and Constructivist Approaches. Does Housing Liberate?
Arredamento Mimarlık. 2020.Conference Papers
2022
From State-led to Aided Self-help: Marshall Plan and Workers’ Housing Cooperatives in Turkey
2022-09-01. 15th Conference of the European Association for Urban History (EAUH 2022), Antwerp, Belgium, Aug 31-Sep 3, 2022.2021
The right to housing? The antinomies of social housing between public and private
2021. 5th Biennial Conference 'Public Space: the Real and the Ideal' International Society for the Philosophy of Architecture (ISPA 2021), Monte Verità, Ascona, Switzerland, July 2-5, 2021.2020
From technocrats to laymen: Community planning and self-help housing for workers in Marshall Plan countries
2020-11-21. 'Housing and the City' 17th Annual International Conference of the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA2020), Nottingham, United Kingdom (online), November 19-21, 2020.2019
Public housing for domestication: The socio-spatial politics of settling the Bulgarian immigrants in Turkey after 1950 and 1989
2019. EAHN Conference 2019-Displacement and Domesticity since 1945. Refugees, migrants and expats making homes, Brussels, Belgium, March 28-29, 2019.2018
Decentralization for Productivity: The Politics of Welfare and the Introduction of Suburban Dream to Workers’ Housing in Postwar Turkey
2018. International Symposium: The idea of decentralization and regional planning in the 20th Century, Milan, Italy, December 11-12, 2018.2013
The Functional City between utopia and reality
2013. 14th International Conference of the Utopian Studies Society-Europe, New Lanark, Scotland, United Kingdom, July 1-4, 2013.Historicist aesthetics of architectural image: Mimesis and memorial in public space
2013. 'Aesthetics in Action' 19th International Congress of Aesthetics, Krakow, Poland, July 21-27, 2013.Book Chapters
2023
Gospel of the Marseille Docker - Nicholas Derybolsky from 1952
Unearthing Traces. Dismantling imperialist entanglements of archives, landscapes, and the built environment; Lausanne: EPFL Press, 2023-02-25. p. 320.2022
Transnational Expertise and Local Policies for the Architecture of Spanish Tourism Industry
Coastal Architectures and Politics of Tourism: Leisurescapes in the Global Sunbelt; New York: Routledge, 2022. p. 392.2019
Mintrak Housing Cooperative: The Case of a Mid-Century Housing Block as an Archetype from Production to Architectural Culture
Demirtaş Kamçıl-Rahmi Bediz; Ankara: Koç Üniversitesi VEKAM, 2019. p. 107-134.2018
Territorialized Visibility of the Act of Commodification
Mapping Syrian Migration: Migrant Spaces in Ankara; Ankara: ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi Yayınları, 2018.Informal Home
Mapping Syrian Migration: Migrant Spaces in Ankara; Ankara: ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi Yayınları, 2018.2012
Urban Space and Resistance: A Reading on Sakarya District
Ankara Kent Atlası; Ankara: Mimarlar Odası Ankara Şubesi Yayınları, 2012.Talks
2023
Marshall Plan’s workers’ housing program and trade union cooperatives in France and Turkey
News Forms of Urban Living, Regional Seminar #4 Exploring the Twentieth-Century Historic Thematic Framework in the European Context. Organised by Getty Conservation Institute, ICOMOS Turkey National Scientific Committee on 20th Century Heritage, Istanbul Technical University, Online, April 28, 2023.‘Monsieur, I have a wife and child, a house and a garden, et alors?’
PhD Workshop, The Fifth Typology Symposium, EPFL, Lausanne, April 4-5, 2023.2022
Houses take on housing blocks. Marshall Plan’s cooperative housing for ‘free labor'
Post-Modern? 6th Rencontres de l’EDAR - Interdisciplinary PhD Seminar, EPFL, Lausanne, Suisse, June 3, 2022.2021
How the Labour Self-Build: Marshall Plan and Workers’ Housing Cooperatives in Turkey
GUDesign Network. Housing People, Shaping Cities Thematic Node Seminar, 'Cooperative House-Building Practices in the Aftermath of WWII', Online, November 10, 2021.Self-help housing / autoconstruction
'Housing: Keywords for an Architectural Manifesto' EAHN Housing Interest Group Meeting (EAHN 2021), Edinburgh, United Kingdom (online), June 2-5, 2021.2020
Marshall Plan in Europe: From reconstruction to workers’ housing
Atelier Ortelli – BA5 Théorie et critique du projet, Lausanne, Switzerland, Novembre 17, 2020.“The Golden Age of Capitalism” in Northern Mediterranean: Workers’ Housing Programs, 1945-1973
gta Doctoral Reviews, Zürich, Switzerland (online conference), May 28, 2020.2019
Policy, program and project in social housing of the welfare state: A comparative analysis of postwar Mediterranean models in translation of existenzminimum
5e Journée d'études Bernardo Secchi - Existenzminimum: les 90 ans du 2e CIAM, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2019-09-24.Student Projects
2021
Croissance intérieure, nouvelle Turquie à Delémont
20212015
Building Marshall Plan in Turkey: The formation of workers' housing question, 1946-1962
2015-09-09Research
Grants and Awards
PhD Scholarship
«Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship ESKAS» Federal Commission for Scholarships for Foreign Students (FCS), 2019-2023.
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne (CH).
Visiting PhD Researcher Grant
EPFL Doc.Mobility, EPFL Doctoral School & swissuniversities, 2023-2024.
University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley), Berkeley CA (US).
Summer School Organization Grant
EPFL-ETHZ PhD Summer School, ETH-Domain, 2022.
Tschlin, Graubünden (CH).
Visiting Scholar Grant
«Short-Term Scientific Mission» COST Action 18137 European Middle-Class Mass Housing, 2022.
National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Athens (GR).
Master's Thesis Award
«Young Social Scientists Awards» Honourable Mention, 2017.
Turkish Social Sciences Association (TSBD), Ankara (TR).