Architectural Heritage of the Ottoman Balkans; Public Buildings and Urban Spaces
The Ottoman Empire's rule in the Balkans began in the late 14th century and continued until the late 19th century, and its impact on the region's history, culture, and society was significant. The systematic study of Ottoman influence in the Balkans, however, has only gained pace from the early 20th century.
Architectural Heritage of the Ottoman Balkans: Public Buildings and Urban Spaces explores aspects and instances of Ottoman public architecture in the Balkans, a region that encompassed diverse populations, climates, and landscapes, all of which contributed to a wide array of architectural variations in both public and private structures. Throughout the book, a common thread emerges: the rich tapestry of Ottoman architecture in the Balkans reflects a synthesis of influences, both local and global. Ottoman, regional, and European architectural traditions intertwine to create a distinctive architectural identity that characterizes the region.
This book also underscores the challenges of studying historical architecture, including language barriers and the scarcity of well-preserved records, while highlighting the importance of understanding these structures in their historical and cultural contexts.
“Chardak, Bondruk’’ +/– 1 °C: In Search of Well-Tempered Architecture
Ecology has significantly influenced the development of architecture in the past decade; in this field, often understood as “energy efficiency of buildings.” Other engineering disciplines have taken care of the presumed greater ecological nature of architecture with heat pumps, zero-energy house technology, ventilation with heat recovery, and similar technologies; these turn our homes into high-tech machines intended to contribute to economical energy management. “Energy efficiency” thus does not appear as the starting point of architectural design but rather as a completely separate, independent component of the building. Vernacular architecture of past centuries did not know such distinctions – ecology in previous periods generated architecture and was inseparable from it.
The book +/- 1 °C: In Search of Well-Tuned Architecture, in collaboration with 50 architects and creators, explores and analyzes examples of vernacular objects from Europe that, unlike current contemporary practice, address the question of ecology holistically as an integral part of architectural design. The book is accompanied by 4 interviews with domestic and foreign experts who professionally deal with ecology in various fields. The curator and design consultant Jane Withers, economist and politician Janez Potočnik, chemist Michael Braungart, and philosopher Timothy Morton place the complex and multi-layered theme of ecology in architecture, which cannot be thought of in isolation, into a broader socio-economic context.
Istanbulʼs Vanishing Memory: The Tangible Heritage of Galata
Throughout the centuries Galata district in Istanbul has been a unique crossroad of diverse tangible and intangible heritage. During the past sixty-seventy years the heritage in the district was and still is under a constant impact and under risk of vanishing due to its neglect and lack of enhancement particularly within the growth of Istanbul’s metropolis in the twenty first century. Since ancient times Galata, which today is a neighborhood within the Beyoğlu Municipality, maintained a distinctive charm in the city’s physiognomy, due to the social and cultural contribution of its inhabitants, establishing throughout the centuries this unique urban environment. During the Byzantine Empire, with the establishment of the Genoese colony, Galata district, or Pera as it was also known in ancient Greek and Roman times, grew as an “Italian” and Latin city inside the core of the oriental Orthodox world, building up a distinctive architectural environment within the urban texture adapting to the morphology and the orology of the site, connected to the surrounding hills and to the sea, entirely distinctive and independent from the greater center of Constantinople situated on the opposite side of the Golden Horn. This “foreign” aspect of the colony was somehow implemented and preserved in the following centuries when Galata initiated being constantly populated by Christian foreigners, the so-called Frenks or Levantines, who settled in the area, bringing their own cultural aspects, customs, and traditions as well as religions
Building the Future (?) Beyond the Stereotypes: Istanbul’s Architectural Identity in the New Millennium (2000-2020)
Lo scopo di questo lavoro è di presentare alcuni aspetti controversi e contraddittori di Istanbul, attraverso esempi di urbanistica, infrastrutture e architetture realizzati negli ultimi vent’anni. Istanbul, come centro internazionale della nuova società globale del 21 ° secolo, è un perfetto esempio di città cresciuta incredibilmente nel recente passato, che cerca di collocarsi come una metropoli contemporanea e, allo stesso tempo, di collegarsi con un passato non ben identificato, oscillante tra le tradizioni ottomane e turche alla ricerca costante di segni originali per ridefinire la sua identità.
The aim of this chapter is to present several new examples of Istanbul’s urban, infrastructural and architectural development that occurred during the past twenty years. Being an international hub of the 21st century’s global society, Istanbul is a perfect example of a city that in the recent past grew extremely, trying to position itself as a contemporary metropolis and - at a same time –bond itself with the past, shifting between Ottoman and Turkish traditions, searching for original symbols in order to redefine its identity.
Keywords: Istanbul Contemporanea, Città Globale, Identità Urbana. Contemporary Istanbul, Global City, Urban Identity.
From Galata to Pera: Shifting Borders in Ottoman Society (1453–1923)
The Genoese walled town of Galata was positioned on the Golden Horn opposite Byzantium. Beyond the furthest northern point of its walls and the tower fields and rural areas lied. Later on this site that lied beyond the Genoese settlement the most cosmopolitan part of Ottoman Istanbul will develop. Life in Galata was condensed due to maritime trade and harbor’s activities. The settlement couldn’t absorb the influx of incoming population due to increased trades. As a result, its borders were pushed and extended outside its walls toward the rural area of the hill and its ridge above, later known as Beyoğlu and Pera. These rural, agricultural areas with cemeteries and groves on the north side of Galata will transform into an area marked with diplomatic representative’s residences and palaces. Here the new cosmopolitan city following Western European models will be established. The rural fields of the past will be replaced with new structures that will later change the entire area into a new cosmopolitan core of modern Istanbul baring the name of Pera. Galata and its walled frontier will slowly disappear and will transition from Galata toward Pera known as Beyoğlu, center of new emerging cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
A summer thermal bath resort at the border of the Italian Fascist Empire and its reuse today
The Italian architectural heritage in the South Aegean built during the occupation of the Dodecanese islands is represented in the case study of the Kallithea thermal bath resort on the island of Rhodes. During the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1912, the Dodecanese islands were formally annexed by Italy as the Possedimenti Italiani dell’Egeo. Italian colonists settled there until 1943. For Mussolini, these Italian-occupied lands provided the opportunity for a program of new infrastructure, urban planning and architecture aimed to realize the dream of fascist modernità in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Built in 1928, the Kallithea resort is tangible evidence of the Italian “colonialist” presence in the aforementioned territories. The foremost idea for this complex was to maintain a romantic and exotic vision in pristine nature perceived more as a tourist attraction than as a site for propaganda delivered through architecture.
The chapter investigates how this complex came into existence and survived until today. After World War II, when the islands were returned to Greece, they represented Fascist occupation and evidence of Italian rule. They were therefore left abandoned and unmaintained for many years. However, recently the resort has been restored and revitalized and now operates as a prominent touristic destination on the island.
The urban and architectural environment of a port town in Northern Greece: the case of Kavala in Ottoman time (1391-1912)
The town of Kavala in the Northern Aegean Sea, located opposite the Island of Thasos, was “born” after the Ottoman conquest of Byzantine town of Christoupolis in 1391. The town that was lying on a hilly peninsula in 1391 was leveled to ground and the population scattered in different parts of the nearby lands. The consequently birth of the Ottoman settlement was mainly due to the activities of the two sultans, Selim I and Suleiman the Magnificent. Since Kavala was positioned on the Sol Kol, the ancient Roman Via Egnatia that the Ottomans used also as trading road, the town lay at the point where Via Egnatia was coming down to the shore because of the high mountains to the north. The caravans that were commuting along this route were at constant attacks by the corsairs lurking along the coast. In order to protect this road and the small port, Selim I built the fort at the top of the peninsula
The reflecting architectural design elements from its Ancient Persian origins into the gardens of the East and the West
The literal meaning of the word paradise came from the Eastern Old Iranian language word pairi-daêza. The literal meaning of the word is ‘walled (enclosure)’, from pairi- ‘around’ and -diz ‘to create (a wall). For exceptional gardens, pairi-daeza was later shortened to parideiza and then to paridiz. However, as a compound word, pairidaeza came to mean a celestial garden, a heavenly paradise on earth. The gardens, even though represented the men’ s quest for pleasure, still held the idea of the four rivers, which flow through Paradise. This idea was used to form the architectural conception of the canals with flown water forming the garden that attempted to present Eden, with the four rivers and the four quadrants that represented the world. Persian gardens are seen as the Heaven on Earth and even though, throughout time, the concept of garden of pleasure diverted into a man’ s interpretation of power and nobility, becoming a sign of distinction and authority for those who were in position to create and ‘live’ them, they still kept the architectural concept of the Persian Paradise Garden.
Ottoman Heritage in Southern Balkans: The Multicultural Port Town of Kavala
Multiculturalismisoneofthekeystonesinunderstandingthecomplexity of the Ottoman civilization. Especially in the provincial areas of the vast empire established by the Ottomans in almost six hundred years, it is possible to observe how multiculturalism and multi-ethnical components were a fundamental tool to glue together such diverse of populations and religions, in which each community had the possibility to maintain their distinctive collective identities, culture, rituals and practices. In the case of the town of Kavala in the Southern Balkans, that passed from Byzantine into the hands of the Ottoman rule after its conquest in 1391, it is possible to track how the town—through the centuries—became more and more a multicultural center, due to the economic and social dynamics in the society itself, up till the dramatic events of the Balkan Wars in 1912. The Ottoman town developed rapidly around its harbor and the trade activities and this paper wants to outline the urban environment of Kavala and its growth in the Ottoman time, from the conquest until its annexation to Greece.