Yunus Emre Institute (YEE), which introduces Turkey’s cultural heritage in creative ways to foreigners, has launched a new talk series on how Turkish culture has developed in the last two centuries in the field of architecture and design while adapting to global changes and trying to preserve its unique values.
As part of the online series titled “Architecture and Design Talks,” experts talk about the transfer and sustainability of cultural heritage under the moderation of designer, curator and writer Gökhan Karakuş. They also discuss their own work in the Turkish cultural context and their views on their 20th century modernist predecessors.
Due to its geographical location, Turkey has always been the center of dichotomies, such as East-West, Europe-Asia, Islam-Christianity, static-nomadic and industrial-agrarian, and this situation has shaped the country’s culture and architecture over time.
In the YEE’s latest talk series, contemporary figures analyze key turning points that influenced Turkish architecture and design in history, like the Ottoman Empire’s initial westernization policies of the 18th century, late 20th-century economic liberalism and the early 21st-century global system.
The first guest speaker of the series was the award-winning architect Gökhan Avcıoğlu with the talk titled “Alpaslan Ataman’s Drawings of the Spatial Typology of Ottoman Architecture” on June 17. Avcıoğlu discussed Alpaslan Ataman’s exhibition "Timeless Architecture" in his talk.
Ataman was an architect, researcher and intellectual, a crucial figure who connected Ottoman urbanism to the modern world. Ataman’s drawings of Ottoman architecture shrewdly examine key themes in its planning and organization, illustrating a keen understanding of spatial typology.
Ataman’s detailed architectural drawings show us the world of architecture and urbanism of Ottoman Istanbul, which has made an important contribution to the contemporary architectural discourse in Turkey.
“The Architecture and Design” talk series is planned to be a long-running event hosting guests with interesting perspectives. In the next sessions, the event will welcome architects Süha Özkan, Mert Eyiler Pelin Derviş and Gül Irapoğlu, ceramisist Jale Yılmabasar, graphic designer Ömer Durmaz, digital artist Candaş Şişman and architect Gül Irapoğlu as speakers.
The institute will announce the date and details of further talks later on.
