Cut-off Marks on the Château 

I don't recall the first time I saw Haydarpaşa train station over the sea. nor do I recall the first time I took the ferry on my own. It must have been during high school, I pretty much hinged on my parents' commute before that. What I do remember is the strange feeling of ‘heimlichkeit’ -- a  sense of inert familiarity towards a building. Despite its magnificence, I was not deeply moved -- as one might rightfully be upon seeing a train station on the sea -- nor surprised. Instead, I calmly reckoned the ornate facade, as if I was the architect who planned it. Seizing the tectonic hierarchical order leveling up with my gaze, my mind traveled within the style-references of the eclectic building. The rustic masonry foundation followed up by two levels separated with a line of  balustrades. Arched windows of the first floor were decorated with neo-classical pointed open pediments. And the three entrances were articulated by a Palladian gesture of three balconies. They were followed by under ranked, simple rectangular windows on the mezzanine floor. Whereas the third floor windows were separated elegantly from the rest of the facade, and were illustrated as a part of the roof, which made all prominent figures such as the big clock look more integrated as a part of the vertical facade. And finally the two round towers framed the facade of the building as two watchguards standing still and firm in front of the castle door.

My critical gaze towards built environment has been well trained since childhood. Growing up in the early 90s in Istanbul meant belonging to a pre-internet generation, who spent most days outdoors fighting the “other” kids in the neighbourhood. The street everyday provided the needed equipment for territorial defense for weak juvenile battles. This kind of gaming also meant, getting crafty and hands-on with whatever tool we utilised as low-tech inventions of our imaginations. Cannonballs made out of yesterday’s newspapers, HE-MAN swords out of wooden sticks, imaginary cooking ingredients out of collected tree leaves, make-up and beauty mixtures out of flowers plucked from the foreyards of  apartment buildings and pieces of rusty wire as remnants from the numerous worksites in the neighbourhood were the must-be props of our weekly activities. Our daily trips were taken to the little street shop for sweets, chips, bubble-gum and all sorts of essentials of our existence. One thing we could never agree on was who would get the supplementary gifts from the children magazines that we had all collectively paid for. These disputes  were resolved by absurd challenges like breath holding contests.

Like most of my friends, I was a busy kid. We met off school mostly during the week. Because weekends belonged to me -- at least the early mornings. While my parents slept off  the exhaustion of the work week, I had a strict schedule. Planned by me. Waking up at 06:00 a.m may seem ambitious for an eight year old, but I had studied the TV schedule and it was worth it. I used to settle into the living-room couch in front of the TV, in order to watch Looney Tunes, Garfield and Friends, The Peanuts, The Muppet Show - a legendary line-up of classical American cartoons. It was a childhood duty. 

Just about 09:00 a.m. when morning shows followed the cartoons, I would lose interest with TV. Next big act of the day was unlocking the house door by myself -- which was a huge grown-up responsibility at the age of eight -- to receive the weekend newspaper. Among many other reasons, this was a particular one to look forward to on the weekends. Our newspaper back then gifted offset-print templates of buildings to be modeled as supplementary to weekend’s paper. My Dad stopped buying this newspaper in the following years, arguing that it was no different to any other newspaper, or to watching the news on TV. He argued that all news on Turkish media were from a hegemonial source that manipulated  reality. He eventually stopped buying any newspapers altogether... However, the model buildings lasted for some time. An entire summer If I recall correctly. I had built a series of buildings which were exhibited in my room in autumn when school started.

On these templates the buildings would be sectioned into facades to be reassembled. On each piece there were cut-off marks to be firstly scissored out, later to be pasted together into a hole cube. The buildings themselves were random collections. In retrospect, I assume that the newspaper aimed to teach children about the national cultural heritage; thus the first templates were scaled models of the very first building that housed the Turkish Parliament, a classical Turkish mansion (köşk). Then the magnificent Dolmabahçe Mosque, with another mosque and a madrasa to be glued adjacently. However later on they seemed to have run out of ideas or they might have grown tired of producing samples of Turkish heritage. The following were a series of random buildings;  an American barnhouse, a nondescript rural stone house, a military aircraft, a naval battleship, etc. These looked like they were lifted from foreign illustrations. The whole project itself could have been as such. Speculations aside, I collected them all eagerly and built them. Sometimes with my dad’s help, sometimes in competition with my cousin. But always to show off to the neighbour’s kids. I remember one time when the newspaper had gifted readers a big model book to keep us busy for the next two weeks during the school break. A model book with majestic medieval castles and a baroque château with round watchtowers, just like Walt Disney’s. It was a childhood dream come true. 

Pages full of cut-off pieces to be rounded into towers -- 14 of them to be exact -- Little flags on each of them. Walls of masonry, the sides, the back, the frontal facade… all cut out and glued with extensive use of UHU, which might be the first childhood step towards narcotics, fronting nail polish and acetone.  I do not regret the hours I spent handcrafting.  By the end of the semester, I had my own little medieval château that I guarded on top of my wardrobe, away from all my monstrous friends, especially the neighbour’s kids. They would have destroyed my many hours spent in one swift envious strike given half the chance. To be honest, I myself did not have the heart to trash it by playing myself. 

For some time, a strange line-up of buildings stood on the wardrobe as if they were a dissonant group of postmodernist architectural samples.  Eventually, like all non-traumatic childhood memories, the recollection of my châteaus' outcome vanished without a trace. 

Years later, on a ferry crossing from the European to the Asian side of Istanbul, I found myself thinking of those châteaus and imagining the cut-off marks of Haydarpasa. In my case, an expected reasonable human reaction to this encounter would have been a tremendous joy for the re-discovery of my cut-off château. However, this was not the case. For me, it was not a rediscovery of a lost time, nor a boxed-up feeling belonging to childhood. It was an incredible overlap of time within a split of a second, which took me to that engineering mindset of crafting. 

‘Building is a noun, as well as a verb’ the voice of an old professor rang in my ears. 

As the ferry sailed away, I soaked up the gentle afternoon sun reflecting from the south facade of the magnificent train station of Haydarpasa.