Videos by Burak Erdim
Video begins with overview discussion of infrastructural turn in urban studies, anthropology, hum... more Video begins with overview discussion of infrastructural turn in urban studies, anthropology, humanities, particularly in relation to global cities. Video continues with presentations on urban infrastructure in China (Song Yan), housing inrastructural planning in mid-century Turkey (Burak Erdim), and trash/garbage in urban Ghana (Brenda Chalfin). February 2015.
Papers by Burak Erdim
Through the carefully phrased dictum, “All nationalist architecture is bad, but all good architec... more Through the carefully phrased dictum, “All nationalist architecture is bad, but all good architecture is national,” Bruno Taut (1880-1938) expressed to his students at the Academy of Fine Arts in �stanbul his critical position to�ard the formal concerns of both the National and the �nternational styles in architecture. At the same time and perhaps less explicitly, this phrase conveyed the predicament that many modern architects faced as they began to dra� attention to particular qualities of place and culture �ithin the modernizing and yet nationalizing contexts of ne� nation states during the late 1930s and early 1940s. �n an attempt to resist not only the homogenizing agendas of paternalistic states, but also the capitalist and imperialist subtexts of international styles, Taut devised an architectural program that simultaneously contained both regional and trans-national components. Just before his untimely death during his exile in �stanbul (1936-38), Taut �as able to put this p...
Landscape and the Academy, 2019
ARRIS, 2016
Within the context of liberation movements in Africa during the post-World War II period, Charles... more Within the context of liberation movements in Africa during the post-World War II period, Charles Abrams, a New York labor lawyer and a United Nations (UN) housing expert, characterized Ghana as "a country of contrasts and transition." This paper traces how a group of international experts redefined the role of the architect and put forward the community planner as a new type of professional that could ease the tensions and reorganize the relationship between the former colony and the imperial capital and between the country and the city. Based on primary sources, the study examines the establishment of a new school of architecture and community planning in the University of Science and Technology (UST) in Kumasi, Ghana. In addition to analyzing the conceptualization of the curriculum and staffing of this new school, the paper contextualizes its aims within the politics of postwar reconstruction by situating it in relation to another school of architecture and university that Abrams had taken part to initiate in Ankara, Turkey, just prior to his arrival in Ghana. While the link from Kumasi to Ankara situates the project right at the historical crossroads between decolonization and globalization, it also provides new insights to the operations of postwar experts as it shows how
JOTSA, 2018
The nationalizing narratives of the Turkish state framed the construction of the new nation as a ... more The nationalizing narratives of the Turkish state framed the construction of the new nation as a revolution and as a deliberate break from the socio-political practices of the theocratic and multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire. However, the positioning of the schools in the urban landscape and their spatial organization continued the socio-spacial role of the Ottoman sultans' mosques. An analysis of school buildings designed by the German émigré architect, Bruno Taut, in the nation's new capital adds new insights to the existing scholarship on the continuities from empire to republic, further complicating the foundation myths of the nation.
Conference Presentations by Burak Erdim
Book Reviews by Burak Erdim
With her performative approach to state reforms, urban development, and public ceremonies in the ... more With her performative approach to state reforms, urban development, and public ceremonies in the İzmir of the Tanzimat era, Zandi-Sayek is able to unravel the complex and dynamic interplay of the agencies involved. She clearly demonstrates how the eventual implementation of projects or formation of group alliances was not the result of intentions floating unhampered towards fruition, but the tentative outcome of the collective actions of individuals in an anything but consistent and coherent relationship to each other and the physical place in which the action took place. As for the agency of the latter, it would have been interesting to learn more about the ways the physical setting beyond the precise site of intervention interfered with the daily activities and experiences of the actors, but this may well be the subject of one of the many future studies that this book will certainly trigger and inform.
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Videos by Burak Erdim
Papers by Burak Erdim
Conference Presentations by Burak Erdim
Book Reviews by Burak Erdim