Turkey: modern architectures in history

摘要

Sibel Bozdogan, Professor of Architectural History at Istanbul Bilgi University, and Esra Akcan, Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, have collaborated on this fifth edition of the series Modern Architectures in History covering Turkey from ca. 1930 to the present. In nine chapters, which are in part thematic and in part chronologic, they aim to cover the major developments in the field. While discussing the case of Turkey, the authors stress that the country should not be seen as a closed box, but as part of a global, yet diverse evolution of modern architecture (8-10). Nonetheless, they also highlight the fact that the country throughout the period under study was under pressure to define its identity, and often chose 'the West' as something to mimic or distance oneself from in the process, a dilemma that had its impact on architecture (10, 11).