Globalisation Reflected onto Architecture: Tall Buildings of Ankara-Turkey

Policy switching, radical socioeconomic changes, integration and globalisation were started in 1980s. New urban space developments have been accelerated in 1990s and provided urban space identity policies in 2000s. Luxurious shopping malls, hotels, and ultra-posh residences within the city and gated communities on city peripheries have been formed. Thus, the urban geography, urban silhouette and urban identity are being converted through tall buildings that signify the created prestige, status, and power in competition with the global capital. By the globalisation foresight the cities which have gotten ahead of the nation-state was seen. The buildings that converted into a symbolic (iconic) global product leads to an advantage in the race for attracting global investments and tourism, on behalf of the cities/urban districts. This process, which was initiated haphazardly in Turkey in the 1980s, has been on-going throughout the 1990s and especially in 2000s by means of the re-structuring of the government on a neo-liberal basis. The process is concurrently observable through the tall buildings and/or building blocks which match with urban regeneration projects, urban zoning plan revisions and fragmented zoning plans. In this study, the new global world order is evaluated by their status and architectural properties of selected tall and iconic/ultra-modern buildings in Ankara.