Christopher started following the work of Ezgi pehlivan, Middle East Technical University, Restoration.
Christopher started following the work of Selma Goker Wilson.
Christopher started following the work of Manfred Milz, University of Sharjah, Cultural History and Theory.
Papers
Romanticism, Nature and the Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright
Chapter 14 of Facing Mental Landscapes: Self-Reflections in the Mirror of Nature [ISBN 978-3-487-14658-4], Manfred Milz, ed. Georg Olms Verlag: Zürich / New York, pp. 323-340.
The work of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright has traditionally been interpreted as being integrated with its site, reflecting its surroundings, and generally respectful of nature. It has even been equated with such topics as natural architecture, sustainable development and environmental conservation. Wright’s self-designated title for his work, “organic architecture,” has easily lent itself to such an interpretation since the term “organic” can conveniently be equated with the term “natural.”
But, “organic architecture” and the “nature” of Frank Lloyd Wright have more to do with the mid-19th century Romantic literary and artistic attitude towards nature – the opposite of civilization, a substitute for traditional religion, a means of self-awareness and a form of emotional healing – than any kind of sympathy towards so-called “green” architecture, ecological design, sustainable development, or environmental conservation.
This essay focuses on Wright’s major works – The Prairie Houses, Taliesin East, Hollyhock House, Imperial Hotel, Fallingwater and the Guggenheim Museum. It presents each project with regard to Wright’s attitude towards nature, examines Wright’s writings to understand his own definition of “nature” and its relationship to the man-made art of architecture, and proposes an alternative reading of Wright’s work that acknowledges his fascination with nature without categorizing him as a nature-lover.
"Representing National Identity and Memory in the Mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk"
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS [ASIN: B000JZ735Q], vol. 68, no. 2 (June 2009), pp. 224-253.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, leader of the Turkish War of Independence and first President of the Republic of Turkey, died in a bedroom in Dolmabahçe Palace, Istanbul, on 10 November 1938. From Istanbul, his body was taken to the fledgling capital of Ankara for an official state funeral and burial in a temporary tomb until 1953, when his mausoleum, Anıtkabir (literally: memorial tomb), was completed and opened.
Anıtkabir however, is more than just that final resting place of Atatürk’s body – it is a public monument and stage-set for the nation, and a representation of the hopes and ideals of the Republic of Turkey. Sculpture, reliefs, floor paving, and even ceiling patterns are combined in a narrative spatial experience that illustrates, explains and reinforces an imagined history of the Turks, their struggle for independence, and the founding of the Republic of Turkey. It is a collective monument that represents the whole of Turkey, not just a single man.
This essay is an investigation into the architectural attempts to symbolically represent both the man Atatürk and the nation Turkey in the projects proposed for Atatürk’s mausoleum through an international competition and also the mausoleum that was actually built, including the discussions and decisions of where to place the monument. Projects by Auguste Perret, Bruno Taut, Clemens Holzmeister, Johannes Krüger, Adalberto Libera, Giovanni Muzio, Arnaldo Foschini, Sedad Hakkı Eldem, and Emin Onat, amongst others, are compared and discussed within the scope of the “Second National Style” architectural culture of 1940s Turkey.
"The Persistence of the Turkish Nation in the Mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk"
NATIONALISM IN A GLOBAL ERA: THE PERSISTENCE OF NATIONS [ISBN 0-415-41405-9]. Mitchell Young, Andreas Sturm and Eric Zuelow, eds., London: Routledge Press, 2007, pp. 93-114.
The Republic of Turkey, founded in 1923 after a war of independence, created a history for its people that completely and consciously by-passed its Ottoman predecessor. An ethnie called “the Turks,” existent in the multi-cultural Ottoman Empire only as a general name used by Europeans, was imagined and given a story linking it with the nomads of Central Asia, the former Hittite and Phrygian civilizations of Anatolia, and even indirectly with the ancient Sumerian and Assyrian civilizations of Mesopotamia. In the early years of the Turkish Republic, linguistic, anthropological, archaeological and historical studies were all conducted in order to formulate and sustain such claims.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the revolutionary responsible for the Turkish Republic, was the driving force behind this state-sponsored construction of “the Turks”– even his surname is a fabrication that roughly translates as “Ancestor / Father of the Turks.” It is no surprise then that the structure built to house the body of Atatürk after his death, his mausoleum called Anıtkabir, also works to perpetuate such story-telling. Anıtkabir, however, is more than just that final resting place of Atatürk’s body – it is a public monument and stage-set for the nation, and a representation of the hopes and ideals of the Republic of Turkey. Sculptures, reliefs, floor paving, and even ceiling patterns are combined in a narrative spatial experience that illustrates, explains and reinforces the imagined history of the Turks, their struggle for independence, and the founding of the Republic of Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
In this way, Anıtkabir is a collective monument that embodies the whole of the Turkish nation, not just a single man. It is a three-dimensional explanation and reinforcement of the Turkish nation. Additionally, Anıtkabir is used to represent both the Turkish nation and the people of Turkey during major national celebrations and on other more personal occasions. While Atatürk’s mausoleum was originally designed and built to elaborate a Turkish identity, it is the monument’s continued maintenance and usage in memorial rituals and commemorative ceremonies that demonstrates the persistence of this identity (or rather, the persistent need for such an elaboration).
"Looking at / in / from the Maison de Verre"
NEGOTIATING DOMESTICITY: SPATIAL PRODUCTIONS OF GENDER IN MODERN ARCHITECTURE [ISBN 0-415-34139-0], Hilde Heynen and Gülsüm Baydar, eds. London: Routledge Press, 2005, pp. 234-251.
The iconic Maison de Verre, attributed to Pierre Chareau and Bernard Bijvoet (Paris, 1928-1932), has traditionally been analyzed in terms of its eponymous glass block walls, its industrial aestethic, its climate-control advancements and/or the way that the house seems to be like one large piece of furniture. However, few commentators have critically discussed the two different programmatic parts of the building - gynecological office (ground floor) and private residence (upper floors) - and the visual relationships that are manifest within them. Specifically, a "medical gaze"operates in the doctor's office and a "domestic glance"is performed in the residence (in both cases, both literally and figuratively). The scopic regimes can be seen physically in the materiality of the building - imprinted into/onto the glass, steel, rubber and aluminum of the Maison de Verre. It is the intention of this essay to reveal these imprints of the medical gaze and the domestic glance found in the three main material characteristics of the building: (1) its various levels of transparency; (2) its seemingly random space-planning; and (3) its many moving partitions, walls furniture, stairs, and even sanitary fittings.
"Who Really Cares Where George Washington Slept?"
THE MEMORIES OF CITIES: THE ENGRAVING OF HISTORY IN URBAN SPACES [ISBN 2-86272-275-8], Bernard Dieterle and Yves Clavaron, eds., St-Etienne University Press, 2003, pp. 315-322.
This essay examines the phenomenon of plaques on buildings that advertise events occurring on that site in history and asks "Do we really care?" The answer is a resounding "yes," since those plaques are the only physical manifestation of the particular event that has long passed, and represent an attempt by an individual or community to keep the memory of the event alive as long as possible.