Alyson Wharton. The Architects of Ottoman Constantinople: the Balyan Family and the History of Ottoman Architecture

The Architects of Ottoman Constantinople by Alyson Wharton is a timely and much needed contribution not only to the rather scant literature on mid-nineteenth century Ottoman architecture but more generally to the growing critical literature on the historiography of Ottoman non-Muslim constituencies. In a thoroughly researched monograph, Wharton offers a methodical reassessment of the Ottoman-Armenian Balyan family of architects and builders, credited with some of Istanbul’s most coveted imper..

The Unsung of the Canon: Does a Global Architectural History Need New Landmarks?

Over the past two decades, global history has grown into an increasingly well-recognized and popular field of study with its own journal, conferences and publications. As revealed in the wide and lively debate in the field, however, what global history precisely entails and how it differs from other innovative approaches (such as “new” world history or transnational history) is far from clear or settled. For many scholars, global history is merely a variant of a long tradition of world histor..

Alyson Wharton, The Architects of Ottoman Constantinople: the Balyan Family and the History of Ottoman Architecture

The Architects of Ottoman Constantinople by Alyson Wharton is a timely and much needed contribution not only to the rather scant literature on mid-nineteenth century Ottoman architecture but more generally to the growing critical literature on the historiography of Ottoman non-Muslim constituencies. In a thoroughly researched monograph, Wharton offers a methodical reassessment of the Ottoman-Armenian Balyan family of architects and builders, credited with some of Istanbul’s most coveted imper..

Socialist Networks

This issue of ABE focuses on the internationalization of building culture after WWII and the contributions of architects, planners, and engineers from socialist countries to these processes. Complementing the studies of colonial and postcolonial links, international organizations such as the UN, and economic globalization as conduits of the world-wide spread of architecture, this issue discusses the intersection of these networks with flows of labor power, materials, technologies, discourses and images facilitated by institutions from socialist countries. Conditioned by Cold War but not always exemplifying a bipolar division of the world, the sites where architects from socialist countries worked were often characterized by multidirectional exchanges with otherprofessionals, administrators, educators, users, and inhabitants. In the course of these exchanges, the imported expertise was developed, mixed, modified and appropriated by various actors. By discussing these processes, this issue offers a more complicated and situated genealogy of architecture becoming world-wide

Dynamic Vernacular

This issue takes as its subject the relationship between modernism and vernacular architecture in the colonial and postcolonial world. It explores this relationship as a dynamic between modernism and the vernacular, rather than in the more familiar and uni-directional form of modernism’s appropriation of vernacular forms. That this coming together had as much consequence for the vernacular side of the equation as it did for the modernist side, is often recognised but rarely researched. It also explores situations where modernism’s affiliating strategy with vernacular architecture coexisted with policies supporting dispossession and social re-structuring, putting the very existence of the vernacular at risk