Architect Yeoryios Kuluthros’ Deniz Apartment, which is constructed in 1920’s in Şişhane, Istanbul and used by Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts today.
Museum of Architecture set up by Building Information Center in the virtual environment is before the viewers with a new virtual exhibition: “Greek Architects of Westernizing Istanbul”, seeks to shed light on the nineteenth century architecture where Ottoman Empire started to strain its traditional ties moving towards the west without rupturing them, through Greek architects. Tanzimat, proclaimed in 1839, is almost an official document showing that the state has turned its face to the West, with its content. The innovations in fields like government, law, education, health, social life, etc. brings with it various new types of buildings not familiar to the Ottoman architecture built taking Western ones as models. On the one hand, embassies in Istanbul built by European states and also Western type buildings like palaces, summer palaces, schools, then hospitals, post offices, train stations, apartment buildings and office buildings in the second half of the century, change the physical portrait of Istanbul. Of course, this change appears mostly in the area Pera inhabited mostly by foreigners and non-Muslims.
The new types of buildings, the new construction techniques and materials becoming popular in the West, thanks to the industrial revolution, are totally alien to architects groomed at Hassa Architects School and tradesmen operating in the marketplace, employing the traditional techniques of architecture. Hence, the field of architecture is left open to the foreign (European) architects most of whom came to Istanbul to build the embassies of their own countries, then getting involved in other construction projects because of the personal relationships they set up; and later Levantine, Armenian and Greek architects who are Ottoman subjects. Hence, this field of architecture, especially the construction of large scale masonry buildings, is left open.
This second exhibition, curated by Hasan Kuruyazıcı and coordinated by Marina Drymalitou, focusing on the structures of the Greek architects of the period after the “Armenian Architects of Westernized Istanbul”, may be viewed at (www.archmuseum.org) through photographs by Aras Neftçi.
