Architectures of displacement

Architectures of displacement: Resettlement of political emigrants through cortijos, 
a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (History and Critical Thinking) in the Architectural Association School of Architecture.

This study examines the phenomenon of displacement in architecture by framing specific material moments as instances of carrying and transplanting spatial traditions in a new urban context. It takes the cortijo, a Sephardi housing type in Izmir, as its case. Conceptualizing typology as the study of the formation of urban artifacts, in the way Aldo Rossi discusses, commonalities among the buildings in question are charted to trace and reconvene the path of their historic evolution. This approach shows that the type itself is displaced, along with its former residents, and reappropriated in different ways with response to the temporal conditions. Specific transformations are examined to reveal the underlying urban conditions and mutual relationship with the metropolis. Engaging with literature, plans, maps, and photographs, I discuss how spatial arrangements become imbued with the sense of home, and how domesticity is a condition to be established at different scales: expanded from the more intimate and temporary scale of the artifact to that of the greater locale. The dotted lines connect several histories and issues while remaining open to further readings and interpretations of the material. Altogether, resettlement as a process is tied to developing associations, immeasurable by time and recurring. The adoption of Deleuzian concept of territorialization acts to politicize the notion of resettlement in the urban progression.