This book is an unrivalled account of modern architecture in Turkey, placing architecture’s history in the larger social, political and cultural context of Turkey’s development in the twentieth century. It takes the reader from the end of World War I, when the new Turkish Republic was born out of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, to the country’s democratization after the 1950s in the midst of the Cold War’s competing ideological forces, and finally to the present, with Turkey continuing to be dramatically transformed through globalization, economic integration with the world market and transnational cultural influences, as well as with its renewed preoccupations with identity, including its Islamic and Ottoman heritage.
Turkey explores a country on Europe’s most eastern margin, and it is unique in tackling the issue of the modern and contemporary periods typically omitted in traditional surveys of modern architecture and Islamic art and architecture. The authors investigate how and why young Turkish architects adopted modernism early in the twentieth century and explore institutional and architect-designed buildings through the decades down to the present day, from government buildings, hotels and factories to apartment blocks and individual homes both urban and rural. They also focus on informal residential areas, and explain how some that have evolved from small settlements to colossal urban quarters exist at a slippery threshold between legality and illegality.
A richly informative history of Turkey’s built environment by a leading historian of the field, Sibel Bozdogan, and a scholar of architecture, Esra Akcan, this book will be of great interest to architects, urban planners and historians both within and beyond Turkey.
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Reviews for Turkey
New Perspective on Turkey
This is a book that reviews 20th-century developments in Turkish architecture and relates these developments to political changes and intellectual currents of the last century. It is a fascinating story, excellently told and supported by a generous portfolio of photographs, projections and architects plans . . . Bozdogan and Akcan are most illuminating on all aspects of building history in Turkey . . . This book deserves a readership far beyond those interested in architectural history.
Asian Affairs
In this compelling book, Sibel Bozdogan and Esra Akcan have brilliantly interwoven politics with architecture and culture, shaping a portrait of post-Ottoman Turkey. The contribution of architecture and urban design to the transformation of Turkey's urban geography, particularly in the case of the new capital in Ankara, and the use made of modern forms in the construction of the image of a new state, are documented with a wealth of previously unpublished materials. From the early projects that addressed Ataturk's initial program to current experiments in a globalized country, a series of provocative designs and buildings finally receive due credit. In brief, an impressive study.
Jean-Louis Cohen, Architect, Sheldon H. Solow Professor in the History of Architecture, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University