ARCHITECT KEMALLETTIN AND HIS PROJECT-ANKARA PALAS-

ARCHITECT KEMALETTIN

Architect Kemalettin(1870-1927) He is a pioneer of national arcitecture movement.
After he graduated from highschool, he studied in engineering school.He graduated from engineering school in 1891. He was the best student of this school. A German architect, a teacher of engineering school,appointed him as his assistant. They have worked approximately for years. Later, in order to improve himself, he was sent Germany by the government.

Before he had gone to the Germany, he searched the Ottoman history while he was in Istanbul. He searched Architect Sinan and his works. He was full of with the culture of eastern when he went to the Germany.

He had lived a half and four years in Germany. He finished Charlattenburg Technical School. After he graduated from this school, he turned to Türkiye.

Upon returning to Istanbul in 1900, he worked as chief architect in the ministry of war and taught at the School of Civil Engineering. He was a founder of the First National Architectural Movement in the early part of the twentieth century. The style developed by him and his contemporary Vedat Bey has been termed Ottoman Revivalism, because it incorporated the architectural elements of the classical Ottoman period over basically neo-Renaissance structures. When in 1909 he was appointed to the architectural department at the ministry of religious foundations, he began to apply his ideas of a national architecture. Architects trained under his guidance at the ministry helped to spread his vision throughout the Ottoman Empire.
One of Kemalettin's most important works is a complex of 124 apartment houses and 25 shops he designed in 1918, the first examples of reinforced concrete construction in Turkey. The Republic of Turkey, established in 1923, recruited Kemalettin to design the portal of the new Turkish Grand National Assembly building and to complete the design of the Ankara Palace Hotel across from the new parliament building. In addition, he designed a series of housing projects for civil servants.

He was died in 1927 as a result of brain haemorrhage.


ANKARA PALAS

This was Kemaleddin Bey’s first design project after arriving in Ankara. The hotel was designed in 1924 by Architect Vedad Bey, but when he left the project the hotel was built according to Kemaleddin Bey’s new design and opened for business in the autumn of 1927. The hotel was the setting for Ankara’s important political and social meetings, particularly during the early years of the Republic, and was a venue for welcoming all the important guests of the state.

The construction of building started 1924 and the building opened in 1927. The main entrance in front of the street thought as a ‘portal’. There are corridors which are lengthening to left and right. In front of these corridors, there is a dance room and there are tea and cooking rooms. There is a big terrace in front of these rooms. There are 60 rooms, 16 is in the same storey with the tea and cooking rooms. The left 44 is on the up floor and each of them has a balcony which is not so big.

There is an impact of Ottoman’s and Seljuk’s architecture at the ornamentation of Ankara Palas’ exterior.The large balcony with pointed arches on the axially planned rectangular mass’ axis, the raised mass and its domed entrance emphasize its orientalist appearance and monumental aspect. There is a magnificent ballroom receiving daylight from above. The limitation of traditional decoration to balcony parapets and console stones balances the Orientalist emphasis.

Now, it is used as government’s guesthouse.