The University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning presents…“Open Architecture”, a lecture by Esra Akcan.
Esra Akcan’s scholarly work on a geopolitically conscious global history of architecture inspires her teaching. Her research on modern and contemporary architecture and urbanism foregrounds the intertwined histories of Europe and West Asia. Her book Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey and the Modern House (Duke, 2012) offers a new way to understand the global movement of architecture that extends the notion of translation beyond language to visual fields. It advocates a commitment to a new culture of translatability from below and in multiple directions for truly cosmopolitan ethics and global justice. Her book Turkey: Modern Architectures in History(Reaktion/University of Chicago Press, 2012, coauthor Sibel Bozdoğan) is part of a series that aims at an inclusive survey of modern world architecture, and is the first volume in any language to cover the entire 20th century in Turkey.
Akcan is currently working on her next book on the urban renewal of Berlin’s immigrant neighborhood, through which she explores a theory of open architecture. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, and has authored more than a hundred articles in scholarly books and professional journals in multiple languages. She has also participated in exhibitions as an artist by carrying her practice beyond writing to visual media. She was educated as an architect in Turkey and received her Ph.D. from Columbia University.
University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
Address: 2000 Bonisteel Blvd
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
