The recent history of architecture in Türkiye, told by the architects who shaped it. In Ustalara Saygı, the seven-part series I developed and presented, I look at the people behind the buildings, their careers and the architectural culture of a changing country.
Understanding the architecture of a period is not only a matter of looking at the buildings of that period. A great deal also sits in the memory of the architects who designed those buildings: in the people they worked with, the competitions they entered, the offices they founded, and the everyday life of a profession that changed over time.
In 2022 we made the series Ustalara Saygı, which I developed and presented for the 20th year of the Istanbul Association of Architects in Private Practice, from that idea. We listened to the personal and professional stories of nine architects who shaped the growth of private practice in Türkiye, brought together in seven episodes. Our conversations were not limited to the work itself. They also made visible how architectural education, the competition culture, professional organisations, building technologies and relations with clients had changed.
For me this series is a thank-you to the masters, and also an effort to look at the recent architecture of Türkiye through their testimony, and to leave part of that memory to the next generations.
An İstanbulSMD project · With the support of VitrA · 2022
