Büyükada: The Moris Danon Collection, which is largely an attempt to compensate for city history written without islands, was penned to understand and explain the Island spirit, which has the power to surprisingly redefine the relations between centuries, empires, nations, and, most importantly, people.

The Balyans: Ottoman Architecture and Balyan Archive provides a comprehensive review and description of the drawings reflecting the design processes of imperial constructions, most of which belong to the Balyan Family Architecture Archive. The archive was recently opened for research and aims to introduce a new approach to the history of the Balyan practice through the unconstructed and constructed buildings.

Speaker Bio:

Büke Uras, an architect, collector, and writer, was born in Istanbul in 1976 and studied architecture at the University of La Sapienza in Rome. He is the author of Büyükada: The Moris Danon Collection (2023), The Balyans: Ottoman Architecture and Balyan Archive (2021), and the curator of Imaginary World of a Paper Architect: Nazimi Yaver Yenal (2017), and The Architect of Changing Times: Edoardo de Nari 1874-1954 (2013). Uras currently lives in Paris.

Büyükada: The Moris Danon Collection, which is largely an attempt to compensate for city history written without islands, was penned to understand and explain the Island spirit, which has the power to surprisingly redefine the relations between centuries, empires, nations, and, most importantly, people.

The Balyans: Ottoman Architecture and Balyan Archive provides a comprehensive review and description of the drawings reflecting the design processes of imperial constructions, most of which belong to the Balyan Family Architecture Archive. The archive was recently opened for research and aims to introduce a new approach to the history of the Balyan practice through the unconstructed and constructed buildings.

This event is the first of a three-event series, planned for the 2024 Spring semester. The upcoming events are as follows: