Can Bilsel
Can Bilsel is a professor of history and theory of architecture at the University of San Diego. His research bridges the fields of the history of modern architecture, urbanism and housing, with cultural theory and postcolonial studies. He has written and lectured on the modern appropriation and reconstruction of antiquity in archaeology museums, and on the changing political contexts and audiences of architectural conservation. He is the author of Antiquity on Display: Regimes of the Authentic in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, published in 2012 by the Oxford University Press. His article, “Crisis in Conservation: Istanbul’s Gezi Park Between Restoration and Resistance” appeared in June 2017 in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Bilsel is the co-editor, with Juliana Maxim, of Architecture and the Housing Question, a book published by Routledge in 2022.
Can Bilsel completed his Ph.D. in the history and theory of architecture at Princeton University, and a Masters at MIT School of Architecture, and a professional B.Arch at Middle East Technical University (ODTU). He received numerous awards including the Aga Khan and Whiting Fellowships, a Visiting Scholarship at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and EHESS in Paris. Bilsel was a fellow at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles for two consecutive years. For nearly a decade Bilsel served as the Chair of USD’s Department of Art, Architecture and Art History, and as the founding Director of the Architecture Program.
Address: San Diego, California, United States
Can Bilsel completed his Ph.D. in the history and theory of architecture at Princeton University, and a Masters at MIT School of Architecture, and a professional B.Arch at Middle East Technical University (ODTU). He received numerous awards including the Aga Khan and Whiting Fellowships, a Visiting Scholarship at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and EHESS in Paris. Bilsel was a fellow at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles for two consecutive years. For nearly a decade Bilsel served as the Chair of USD’s Department of Art, Architecture and Art History, and as the founding Director of the Architecture Program.
Address: San Diego, California, United States
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Books by Can Bilsel
Architecture and the Housing Question features original work by Reinhold Martin, Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Sandra Parvu, Alice Sotgia, Daria Bocharnikova, Samuel Y. Liang, Miles Glendinning, Kıvanç Kılınç, M. Melih Cin, Patricia A. Morton, Ijlal Muzaffar and Shannon Starkey.
Antiquity on Display is a critical biography of Berlin's Pergamon Museum and its popular architectural displays: the Great Altar of Pergamon, the Market Gate of Miletus, and the Ishtar Gate of Babylon. In this volume, Bilsel argues that the museum has produced a modern decor, an iconic image, which has replaced the lost antique originals, rather than creating an explicitly hypothetical representation of Antiquity. Addressing the dilemmas raised by the continuing presence of these displays, which embody the distinctive traits of the artistic and ideological programs of the last two centuries, Bilsel questions what the process of reproduction and authentication of Antiquity in the museum tells us about our changing perceptions of historic monuments. Documenting the process through which these imaginative reproductions of architecture were conceived, staged, and came to be perceived as authentic monuments, this volume offers an insight into the history of Berlin's Museum Island and the shifting regimes of the authentic in museum displays from the nineteenth century to the present.
Keywords: German Archaeology in the Middle East; Museum Reconstructions; Authenticity in Architecture; Architecture Museum; Architecture in the Museum; History of Berlin Museums; Berlin's Museum Island; the Great Altar of Pergamon; Post-colonial studies; Post-orientalist criticism; Alfred Messel, Wilhelm von Bode; Carl Humann; Theodor Wiegand; Robert Koldewey; Walter Andrae; the Altes Museum; the Neues Museum; the Pergamon Museum (Pergamonmuseum).
Book Reviews by Can Bilsel
Key words: Architectural modernism; Translation in architecture; German and Turkish exchange in architecture; Turkish modernism; the Garden City movement; Hermann Jansen; Plan for Ankara; Weimar Germany’s modernist social housing projects (Siedlungen); Clemens Holzmeister; Ernst Egli; Martin Wagner; Bruno Taut; Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky; Wilhelm Lihotzky; Paul Bonatz; Sedad Eldem; the Turkish house; Cosmopolitan architecture; Seyfi Arkan; the post-structuralist theory in architecture; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and her influence.
Papers by Can Bilsel
Gezi Park protests in Turkey present a particular
challenge to architectural history and conservation.
In the case of the Turkish protests, the central issues were
control over a symbolically important public urban space,
Gezi Park in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, and the power to
shape architectural heritage and public memory. Two visions
of architectural heritage clashed in Taksim: on one hand, the
government’s proposed “restoration” of a demolished Ottoman
building, which would have both reified a neo-Ottoman
political identity and served as a glittering shopping mall; and
on the other, the desire of a broad coalition of citizens and
civic organizations to conserve an urban public park and its
five hundred plane trees. When public revulsion against
police violence transformed Gezi in June 2013 with massive
demonstrations and millions in seventy-nine cities across
Turkey joined in protest, the Gezi Resistance evolved from
a rejection of the government’s authoritarian vision for heritage
restoration and urban renovation into a rejection of the
governing bloc’s cultural hegemony generally.
Rethinking the process that led to the New Acropolis Museum repays today as it adds a new episode to the well-traveled path of the displacement and context of the sculptures. The removal of the Parthenon sculptures from their original location in the early nineteenth century and the subsequent efforts to recreate an aesthetic context for their display in the British Museum were among the foundational questions of museology and of architectural theory. Generations of critics have found the architectural envelope of the Parthenon galleries somehow lacking: the museum was often understood as an imperfect, if necessary substitute for the original context of art.
This debate took a new direction in Athens between the mid-1970s and 2000, during a series of architectural competitions for the New Acropolis Museum. Context came to be understood not merely as the relation of ancient sculptures to architecture, but of the museum to the urban landscape. A new conflict emerged in Athens between the desired aesthetic context of the sculptures, and the political, historical and urban context of the actual site of the museum. Despite the Hellenic Government’s hopes that the new museum would help rally the people of Athens around a patriotic cause, the choice of Markriyianni, a residential neighborhood on the southern foot of the Acropolis, triggered a series of controversies.
Today, looking down from the Acropolis along the south slope, the visitors cannot help but notice Tschumi’s New Acropolis Museum hovering over Markriyianni like a space ship. Whereas a number of archaeologists and critics have provided a thorough assessment of the museum’s curatorial program, few writers called to task this apparent contradiction: a museum that is celebrated for giving an immediate visual access to the Parthenon, and for its respect of the archaeological context, remains militantly alien to its urban setting. Describing the process that led to the construction of the new museum, this chapter shows how the embrace of one context is coupled with the erasure of the other. By construing and authenticating the museum’s aesthetic context optically, and by neutralizing the social challenges posed by Athens’ urban setting, the New Acropolis Museum exemplifies a new paradox: a world heritage museum that is both site-specific and deterritorialized.
Architecture and the Housing Question features original work by Reinhold Martin, Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Sandra Parvu, Alice Sotgia, Daria Bocharnikova, Samuel Y. Liang, Miles Glendinning, Kıvanç Kılınç, M. Melih Cin, Patricia A. Morton, Ijlal Muzaffar and Shannon Starkey.
Antiquity on Display is a critical biography of Berlin's Pergamon Museum and its popular architectural displays: the Great Altar of Pergamon, the Market Gate of Miletus, and the Ishtar Gate of Babylon. In this volume, Bilsel argues that the museum has produced a modern decor, an iconic image, which has replaced the lost antique originals, rather than creating an explicitly hypothetical representation of Antiquity. Addressing the dilemmas raised by the continuing presence of these displays, which embody the distinctive traits of the artistic and ideological programs of the last two centuries, Bilsel questions what the process of reproduction and authentication of Antiquity in the museum tells us about our changing perceptions of historic monuments. Documenting the process through which these imaginative reproductions of architecture were conceived, staged, and came to be perceived as authentic monuments, this volume offers an insight into the history of Berlin's Museum Island and the shifting regimes of the authentic in museum displays from the nineteenth century to the present.
Keywords: German Archaeology in the Middle East; Museum Reconstructions; Authenticity in Architecture; Architecture Museum; Architecture in the Museum; History of Berlin Museums; Berlin's Museum Island; the Great Altar of Pergamon; Post-colonial studies; Post-orientalist criticism; Alfred Messel, Wilhelm von Bode; Carl Humann; Theodor Wiegand; Robert Koldewey; Walter Andrae; the Altes Museum; the Neues Museum; the Pergamon Museum (Pergamonmuseum).
Key words: Architectural modernism; Translation in architecture; German and Turkish exchange in architecture; Turkish modernism; the Garden City movement; Hermann Jansen; Plan for Ankara; Weimar Germany’s modernist social housing projects (Siedlungen); Clemens Holzmeister; Ernst Egli; Martin Wagner; Bruno Taut; Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky; Wilhelm Lihotzky; Paul Bonatz; Sedad Eldem; the Turkish house; Cosmopolitan architecture; Seyfi Arkan; the post-structuralist theory in architecture; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and her influence.
Gezi Park protests in Turkey present a particular
challenge to architectural history and conservation.
In the case of the Turkish protests, the central issues were
control over a symbolically important public urban space,
Gezi Park in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, and the power to
shape architectural heritage and public memory. Two visions
of architectural heritage clashed in Taksim: on one hand, the
government’s proposed “restoration” of a demolished Ottoman
building, which would have both reified a neo-Ottoman
political identity and served as a glittering shopping mall; and
on the other, the desire of a broad coalition of citizens and
civic organizations to conserve an urban public park and its
five hundred plane trees. When public revulsion against
police violence transformed Gezi in June 2013 with massive
demonstrations and millions in seventy-nine cities across
Turkey joined in protest, the Gezi Resistance evolved from
a rejection of the government’s authoritarian vision for heritage
restoration and urban renovation into a rejection of the
governing bloc’s cultural hegemony generally.
Rethinking the process that led to the New Acropolis Museum repays today as it adds a new episode to the well-traveled path of the displacement and context of the sculptures. The removal of the Parthenon sculptures from their original location in the early nineteenth century and the subsequent efforts to recreate an aesthetic context for their display in the British Museum were among the foundational questions of museology and of architectural theory. Generations of critics have found the architectural envelope of the Parthenon galleries somehow lacking: the museum was often understood as an imperfect, if necessary substitute for the original context of art.
This debate took a new direction in Athens between the mid-1970s and 2000, during a series of architectural competitions for the New Acropolis Museum. Context came to be understood not merely as the relation of ancient sculptures to architecture, but of the museum to the urban landscape. A new conflict emerged in Athens between the desired aesthetic context of the sculptures, and the political, historical and urban context of the actual site of the museum. Despite the Hellenic Government’s hopes that the new museum would help rally the people of Athens around a patriotic cause, the choice of Markriyianni, a residential neighborhood on the southern foot of the Acropolis, triggered a series of controversies.
Today, looking down from the Acropolis along the south slope, the visitors cannot help but notice Tschumi’s New Acropolis Museum hovering over Markriyianni like a space ship. Whereas a number of archaeologists and critics have provided a thorough assessment of the museum’s curatorial program, few writers called to task this apparent contradiction: a museum that is celebrated for giving an immediate visual access to the Parthenon, and for its respect of the archaeological context, remains militantly alien to its urban setting. Describing the process that led to the construction of the new museum, this chapter shows how the embrace of one context is coupled with the erasure of the other. By construing and authenticating the museum’s aesthetic context optically, and by neutralizing the social challenges posed by Athens’ urban setting, the New Acropolis Museum exemplifies a new paradox: a world heritage museum that is both site-specific and deterritorialized.
This conference seeks to recover some of the rich political, social, or aesthetic scenarios contained in the history of housing. For two days, the Department of Art, Architecture + Art History at the University of San Diego is hosting a group of scholars from around the world. Professor Reinhold Martin of Columbia University will be the keynote speaker.