“After all, one day
We will return from these roads
With a handkerchief in one hand
And birdsong in the other”
— CEMAL SÜREYA
At first glance, belonging and owning seem to be contradictory, but in fact, these two concepts complement each other. In order to belong somewhere, a person first feels the need to possess it: a homeland, a flag, a folk song, a poem, a street, a house, sometimes even a person… Possession is not just ownership; it is knowing, understanding, and connecting. Only then do we truly feel we belong somewhere. With migration, what we possess is lost; new things take their place. But this is not a simple change of location; it is also a process of compensation. As we replace yesterday with today, we carry the traces of what we have lost. Even though people are involved in what they experience, they often cannot intervene in what is happening. The past disappears with our memories, while the future is a hopeful destination we dream of belonging to. For this very reason, migration is not only a spatial journey, but also an emotional and existential one. In this journey, architecture is a bridge that preserves people’s past and memories while also building a sense of belonging to their future.
The Memory of Migration and the Language of Place
Architecture carries traces of the past; it builds spaces that preserve culture, beliefs, habits, customs, and traditions, guiding us toward the future, bringing people together with both the familiar and the new. Being a stranger in a place is not just being in another country or city. It is walking on unfamiliar streets, being silent in a neighborhood whose sounds we do not know, waking up in a house whose smells we do not recognize. Strangeness is not only physical, but also an emotional, cultural, and social state of deficiency. Architecture aims to fill precisely this deficiency. Humans seek answers to the question “Where am I?” through space. This question evokes the mind, the heart, the past, and the future. The place where humans have the freedom to get lost is actually the place where they belong. The most beautiful example of ownership and belonging is the Palestinian people, who have been fighting for their homeland before our very eyes for two years. Palestine and Gaza show us with their belonging, faith, identity, steadfastness, and honor that to have a homeland, a flag, is to protect it against all power and oppression. Architecture is not just shelter for the Palestinian people; it is an expression of identity, memory, and resistance. Jerusalem, as the first qibla of Muslims, is not just a city but an architectural symbol of faith, belonging, and resistance. By defending Jerusalem, the Palestinian people are protecting not only a place of worship but also their history, culture, faith, and existence. Palestinians mourn the homes stolen from them during the Nakba by wearing the keys around their necks. The keys they wear around their necks symbolize the hope of one day returning to their homes. The key is the simplest yet most powerful symbol of the architectural memory belonging to a place that seems lost. Whoever holds the key owns the land! Here we see that a person’s relationship with a place is reflected in their identity and sense of belonging. And I believe that one day the occupation will end; Palestine and Gaza will be returned to their rightful owners, and reconstruction will begin for Gaza. At that time, as a Muslim architect, I pray to be involved in the city’s reconstruction with the intention of understanding all the wounds of the people who fought this honorable struggle and compensating them in some small way.
What the Space Reminds Us of and the Traces of Identity
People seek out familiar walls, materials they are accustomed to, and street corners they know by heart. For someone who has migrated, belonging is an effort to hold on to the new without severing ties with the past. In this regard, we architects seek answers not only from a technical perspective but also in the search for meaning. We design buildings not only as spaces for shelter and daily activities, but also as carriers of memories, stories, and dreams. Architecture reflects identity, and identity leaves its mark on architecture. Human nature wants to be remembered; therefore, when migrating, people want to leave traces behind: the tree they watched from their balcony, the sounds of children playing in the street, the call to prayer they heard from the mosque in their neighborhood, the ingredients they used in their kitchen, the square they walked through on their way home… All these are pieces of identity that are transported to another place with migration. Architecture is not about producing uniform structures; it is about creating designs based on need while preserving culture. It builds spaces that bear the traces of both the culture it carries and the new environment. An example of this is the Dar AL Islam Center, built by the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, whom I greatly admire, in the state of New Mexico in the southwestern United States. The building has had significant architectural, cultural, and social impacts in America. For Muslim immigrants, the center is not just a mosque; it has also become a place for education, culture, and community life. For example, the Arabic language classes, art workshops, and religious education programs held here have created an environment where both local Muslims and Americans who have recently become interested in Islam can build their identities. At the societal level, Dar al-Islam has contributed to Americans’ understanding of Islam not only through the news, but also through its aesthetic and human aspects. Because it is open to visitors, many Americans encountered traditional Islamic architecture here for the first time. It was also frequently cited at the academic level as one of the rare buildings representing the concept of “architecture for society” in architecture schools. In short, Dar al-Islam, both as a building and an idea, left a lasting mark on architecture, immigrant communities, and perceptions of Islam in the United States.
What traces will an immigrant family remember when entering a new country, a new city, and a new home? The answer to this question lies not only in aesthetics but also in the materials used, the orientation of the building, and the relationship between interior and exterior spaces. Architecture establishes belonging not through aesthetics but through emotion. It brings the transformative power of foreignness into space. Only when an architect can feel and understand the emotions of a migrant can they create meaningful spaces. Understanding people, hearing their needs, forms the essence of architecture. Architects become part of the stories that bring people together with themselves and their memories. Being a stranger in a place can sometimes be a rupture, a sadness; sometimes it is a rebirth with hope. Architecture transforms this rupture into a process of rebuilding. Because architecture is a form of relationship we establish with every living and non-living entity. Every stone, every wall, every space bears traces of migration, memory, and identity. By reading, observing, and feeling these traces, architects design spaces that look to the future without breaking from the past, spaces that are both familiar and fresh, both home and hope. Because people carry their memories sometimes in their hearts, sometimes in their eyes. This is why people live in space; they want to define and understand themselves in space. Belonging begins precisely at this point. The voice and feelings of every person displaced by migration find life in an object in architecture; sometimes in a door, sometimes in a window, sometimes on a balcony, sometimes in a square. Belonging and identity are a process that not only migrants are involved in, but also we architects, through our work. This process offers us a new beginning related to our next heading, The Transience and Permanence of Space.
Referances
Süreya, C. (2019). Göçebe. İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları.
Damluji, Salma Samar. Hassan Fathy: Earth and Utopia. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2018.
