Space, Art and Architecture between East and West: The Revolutionary Spirit. (original) (raw)

“Art, Space, Mobility in Early Ages of Globalization”: A Project, Multiple Dialogue, and Research Program

Art in Translation, 2017

Art, Space, Mobility in Early Ages of Globalization" aims to promote a new history of art that recognizes the complex and diverse connections forged between the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent from the fourth through the sixteenth centuries. Over the past four years, this project has brought together more than one hundred junior scholars from countries around the world,

Architectures of the Intertwined East and West

İzmir, amongst Eastern Mediterranean port cities, has represented compelling architectural and urban developments during the long nineteenth century. Due to their particular geographical position, the port city of İzmir has been considered a place where "East meets West". Building on what Edward Said calls intertwined history, this paper proposes a lens to read cross-cultural architectural practices at entangled territories by closely examining paired determinants from the East and the West. With the duality in mind, this study borrows the concept of "contact zone" from the field of linguistics to identify the correlation of the Eastern and Western norms, knowledge, ethics, values, techniques that led to architectural knowledge production and architectural practices. Mary Louise Pratt coined the contact zone as "spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination." This study departs from "asymmetrical relations of power" that exist in architectural practices. Not only does the concept allow us to understand the characteristics and dissemination of architectural knowledge, but also it allows us to address the unspoken and invisible process of decision-making in architectural practices. To test the concept for architecture, the 19th-century row-house development in İzmir, i.e., İzmir house, is an appropriate concrete case. Dissecting the building and construction process of the İzmir house through the lens of the contact zone reveals how much the West is present in the East, or vice versa. In conclusion, this paper shows that besides material artifacts and explicit architectural knowledge; socio-cultural contexts and values are also embedded in the architectures. By shining a light on the underlying patterns of the social, spatial, cultural encounters, the concept of "contact zone" establishes a better understanding of the specificity of the knowledge that diverse variables have collectively generated.

From East to West: Persian, Indian and Central European Themes Forming the Architectural Scenery in Early Modern Ottoman Culture

2013

1 ABSTRACT This study aims to define the changes in architectural scenery and cityscape in Ottoman cultural life in early modern era, i.e. 18 century. It is aimed to complement intercultural relations in this age through surveying the foreign impacts on Ottoman architecture. Istanbul, as the capital city, the cultural center of the Ottoman Empire, located between the two worlds: the East and the West, considered as an ideal example for this study. The 18 century for Turkish architecture was a “receptive” age which combined with the wish for innovative experience in all manners, and can be identified as the century of “change”. The exchange of artistic and technical models between the Ottoman cultural era and the rest of the world increased rapidly and extensively at the beginning of the century. In the first decades of the century new period of renewal, called as the “Tulip Period”, appears. Beginning with this period traditional, introverted manner of the society began to change; t...

Encounter with the Architecture of the Islamic World as Turning Point in the Transformation of Artistic Expression

Manazir Journal, 2022

One of the most important Latvian artists of the early twentieth century, Jāzeps Grosvalds (1891-1920), was interested in the “Oriental” world since his adolescence. His first real meeting with the imagined Oriental atmosphere took place in 1913, when he traveled to Spain and visited Toledo, Córdoba, Seville, and Granada. The trip impressed him by the versatility of colors, light, ambience, and architectural forms, and was depicted in a sketch book. Nevertheless, the real transformation of Grosvalds’ artistic expression occurred during his travels through (then) Persia. Due to the circumstances of World War I, at the end of 1917 he joined the Mesopotamian Front under the English Command. The campaign took place in 1918, and he crossed Iran and Iraq. Despite at times very difficult conditions, throughout his travel Grosvalds captured his impressions in sketch albums and watercolors, being interested in architectural, scenic, and anthropological studies. His oeuvre from this period sh...

Orientalism And Occidentalism: An Analysis Of Their Similitude And Contrasts In Relation To Eighteenth-Century Ottoman And European Architecture

Academic Social Resources Journal , 2022

Encounters have led to significant changes in world history. They have allowed cultural exchange between different parties such as the East and West. In the case of Ottoman Empire and Europe, it is also possible to observe the consequences of this issue. Until the eighteenth century, Ottomans did not feel the need to interact and learn from Europeans; however, things changed in this period. The newly formed political and economic relations between Ottomans and Europeans became influential in many areas, including architecture. Cultural exchanges and different attitudes of both parties can be explored by examining the terms of Orientalism and Occidentalism, which can shed light on how they contributed to shaping their architecture. This paper aims to investigate the similitude and contrasts between the concepts of Orientalism and Occidentalism in relation to how they can be used for an analysis of Eighteenth-Century Ottoman and European Architecture.

'Welcome to Europe': A Bridge East of Architectural History

Architectural Histories , 2018

This position paper examines the complex boundaries that separate Europe from both its constructed margins and those of its imagined Others. Where exactly do we enter the Continent and where does it end? Is it while crossing the world-famous bridge on the Bosporus, for instance, that one receives the first impression of Europe, or is it somewhere farther west — past a 'wall' protected by a strong border regime? To address these questions, this paper tells two concomitant stories about the practices of urban governance and architectural design in Turkey in the early twentieth century by providing snapshots of numerous encounters and negotiations between multiple actors: American public health specialists, European-trained local bureaucrats, and a French city planner. While Turkey's dubious position between the West and the East provides the potential for rethinking the boundaries of the Continent, the paper uses the Turkish case primarily to unpack the idea of 'Europe' as both a fluid entity and a fixed location, an uneven terrain upon which canonical discourses of identity are constructed. In doing so, it points to the interchangeability of subject positions, which often result in competing narratives of modernization, urban design, and the whereabouts of the line separating Turkey from Europe.

Space of Architecture: From the Canvas to the City

Architecture as a media, covers the plurality of languages. Being architectural is not only ‘relating to the art or practice of designing and constructing buildings’ but also relating to constructing the textu(r)al, graphic, photo-graphic and urban space; from the canvas to the city, as an architectural object. The analysis and discussion on how the evolutions affected the perception, position and historical understanding of ‘architectural’ object, will be based on the resolution above. The relationship between media and architectural object that I defined as various ‘spaces’ are almost overlapped as thinking is ‘architectural’. Due to cultural and temporal changes, ‘space’ of text, texture, graphic and photograph has been defined, transformed, fragmented, pluralized, destructed, reproduced. Throughout the essay, spatial transformation of each language/media will be discussed through some examples in historical evolution of media and position of artist and architect, in an accumulative approach.