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Turgut Cansever has a rightful claim to being one of the most original and critical voices of Republican Era Turkey. He not only worked actively as an architect since the 1940s, but also produced ideas on how to shape the physical environment; most importantly, he built himself a career of cultural criticism based on architecture. He strove to read the constructed space, from the urban scale to the single building, in the context of the realities of Turkey’s cultural makeover. From the processes of modernization and urbanization to Westernization, from public housing needs to technology, there is hardly a single topic he has not dwelt upon. Of critical importance is his attempt to understand transformation, modernization, and architecture by employing one of the cultural building blocs of Turkish society, i.e., Islamic sources of belief and thought. His approach is an invitation extended to contemporary Turkey, to think about architecture, and in general all cultural production, based not on a radical and traumatic "forgetting" but rather on a calm, cool-headed, and equanimous "remembering".
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