Turgutreis 1974

by Richard Plunz and Suha Özkan

Turgutreis 1974, a publication that Richard Plunz, a leading figure in housing and urban design, and Suha Özkan, Deputy and Secretary General of the Aga Khan Award from 1982 to 2006, have prepared together, will be celebrated with a book launch at Studio-X Istanbul on Saturday, June 4th at 4 pm. Richard Plunz will be presenting Turgutreis 1974, followed by a roundtable discussion with the participations of Suha Özkan, Alison Snyder, Laçin Karaöz, and Zuhal Ulusoy.

Join us for a memorable afternoon remembering Turgutreis.

Richard Plunk
Richard Plunz is a leading figure in urban design and one of the world’s leading authorities in urban housing: His Housing Studios, which he developed at Columbia University are now an integral part of architectural curricula everywhere. His research into the evolution of housing in New York City has led to a number of projects including his landmark study, A History of Housing in New York City (1990). In his long term research interests, Plunz completed: a 14 year project on the urban expropriation of the Adirondack High Peaks region in Upstate New York; a three-decade study of physical and social transformation at Turgutreis, in Bodrum District on the Turkish Aegean coast. The author of many articles, studies, and reports, among Plunz’s publications are many books, including A History of Housing in New York City (1990); The Urban Lifeworld: Formation, Perception, Representation (2002); After Shopping (2003); and Eco-Gowanus: Urban Remediation by Design (2007). His most recent co-edited book is Urban Climate Change Crossroads (2010).

Suha Özkan
Suha Özkan is an architect by training and has undertaken extensive research on the theory and history of architecture, design, vernacular form and emergency housing, and has published numerous articles and monographs in a number of languages. He taught architectural design and design theory at the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, where he became Associate Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, and was later appointed Vice President of the university. In 1983, following his tenure at METU, Dr. Özkan became Deputy Secretary General of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and served as its Deputy and Secretary General from 1982 to 2006. He has organized international competitions for cities including Istanbul, Doha, and Samarkand. He also has been associated with a number of prizes such as the Cityscape (Dubai), Hassan Fathy (Alexandria), European Union (Barcelona) and Architecture Festival (London) prizes. He was the president of the International Union of Architects Congress between 2001 and 2005, and is an Honorary Fellow of American Institute of Architects (2004) He established World Architecture Community and has been the Founding President since 2008. Dr. Özkan returned to teaching at METU in 2009, and remained there until he retired from the university in the summer of 2012. Since his retirement, he has established an architecture library in a 100-year-old house in Bodrum with a great archive of 10,000 books and 20,000 documents.

Alison Snyder
Associate Professor at the University of Oregon, Alison Snyder is interested in the intersection between architecture, art and the interior. Snyder’s research draws on both archaeological and anthropological investigations to reveal how places, buildings, and interiors transform over time. She dismantles settings, structures, and cultural systems—monumental and mundane—for interpretation and analysis. She first explored the role of light in determining structure and form in ancient and modern religious buildings, initially through research and surveys of Ottoman mosques. Influenced by her work as architect for archaeological excavations in Israel and Turkey, Snyder began to investigate the effect of modernization on settlement patterns and customs in Middle Eastern contemporary village vernacular. Her writing on this topic has appeared in the journals Anatolica (2000), Journal of the Faculty of Architecture (2005), Dosya (2009), and in the book On Global Grounds: the specificities of urban change within globalization (2008). Snyder’s current research looks at urban interiors in Istanbul, and how these spaces contribute to marking cultural change within a city undergoing both local and global transformation. Related publications include a journal article in Dosya (2011) and in 2A, Art and Architecture (2015).

Laçin Karaöz
Laçin Karaöz graduated from Yildiz Technical University in 2004. Before starting her master’s degree at History and Theory of Architecture Program at the same university, she has worked at Arredamento Mimarlık and XXI architectural magazines. In 2007 she started to work in the Danish architectural office Bjarke Ingels Group, she worked on several international projects including Superkilen, which is amongst the nominees for Aga Han Architectural Prize of this year. She lives and works as an architect in Bodrum since 2009. There she had gained experience on stone building technique which was the subject of her master’s degree studies.

Zuhal Ulusoy
Zuhal Ulusoy graduated with B.Arch and M.Arch. degrees from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. Receiving a Fulbright scholarship, she continued her graduate studies in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA, USA), where she completed her M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in architecture and urban regeneration. In 1992, Dr. Ulusoy joined Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey) as the Founding Chairperson of the Landscape Architecture and Urban Design Department. She was a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Architecture in 2003-2004, where she taught senior level design studio and a course on housing. In 2005 she joined the newly founded Architecture Department of Izmir University of Economics. Since 2008, she has been working at Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey, as a faculty member in the Architecture Department, where she served as the Dean of Faculty of Art and Design between 2008-2015. She is also in the Administrative Board of the Istanbul Studies Center at Kadir Has University. In Fall 2015 she was a visiting scholar at the City College New York. Her research interests include urban studies, particularly urban regeneration and transformation, as well as design education at various levels. Her articles and chapters on these areas have been published in various refereed journals and in books. She has taught courses on urban design, concepts in architecture, took part in foundation design studios and urban design studios, and supervised Master’s and Ph.D. theses.