Middle East Technical University and Revolution: Development Planning and Architectural Education during the Cold War, 1950-1962

Middle East Technical University and Revolution: Development Planning and Architectural Education during the Cold War, 1950-1962 Burak Erdim Through the analysis of the inception and development of the Middle East Technical University (METU), this dissertation examines the relationship between the diverging ideologies of development that became prevalent within the democratizing and decolonizing contexts of the postwar period. The study shows how the idea of training and education, and more specifically, the idea of a school of architecture and community planning emerged within this context as a new strategy of development and as a common ground among the diverging interests of multiple national and international agents and agencies. The study re-examines the roles played by these national and international agents and agencies, including the role of the expert, and proposes new methodologies for the interpretation of primary documents from this period. Furthermore, the study analyzes how the power dynamic among participating professional groups and state agencies contributed to and shaped the outcome of the project. It reveals how the emerging discipline of urban planning and architect-planners, operating in this context and sponsored by the United Nations Housing and Town and Country Planning (UN- HTCP) agency, played a central role in the configuration of this new strategy as well as in the organization of the administrative and spatial make-up of the resulting institution of higher learning. At the same time, it shows how this configuration was then contested and reconfigured as a result of multiple overlapping rivalries among numerous iv professional and bureaucratic groups: Between Turkish and foreign architects; between the Turkish architectural community and the State; and, between the two existing schools of architecture. The study presents the rivalries among these national and international agents and agencies as the actual political context of the period revealing how professional groups participated in the Cold War much more directly than previously formulated. Through the course of two successive design competitions and taking advantage of the coup of May 27, the study traces how the graduates of the Istanbul Technical University joined hands with the Ministry of Public Works to take the control of the administration and the planning of METU from foreign consultants.

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