{"id":9490,"date":"2026-03-21T05:47:59","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T05:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arch.bilkent.edu.tr\/?p=9490"},"modified":"2026-03-31T05:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:41:13","slug":"building-pera-burning-pera-the-1870-fire-and-the-imaginary-lines-of-urbanization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arch.bilkent.edu.tr\/?p=9490","title":{"rendered":"Building Pera, Burning Pera: The 1870 Fire and the \u201cImaginary Lines\u201d of Urbanization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On 5 June 1870, the heart of Istanbul\u2019s capitalist urbanization, Pera, was ravaged by one of the most disastrous fires in the city\u2019s history. Killing thousands of people (and uncounted nonhumans) and destroying large swathes of the built environment, the Great Fire of 1870 has so far not been investigated in its material complexity and its unequal and heterogeneous impact on the urban landscape. This talk, partially based on a work-in-progress article co-authored with Ahmet Ersoy, remaps the fire\u2019s impact and demonstrates that the post-disaster expertise on the fire was shaped by and contributed to the socio-ecological inequalities in the city. It traces the \u201cimaginary lines\u201d of the insurance agents and mapmakers to reveal the dispossessive links between the 1870 Fire and infrastructural interventions in the city\u2019s environment in this period. As such, it connects this episode of destruction to the speaker\u2019s book project, Urban Elements: Assembling Infrastructure and Environment in Nineteenth-Century Istanbul<\/em>.\u00a0
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Biography:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

K. Mehmet Kentel is assistant professor at Leiden University, Institute for History. His monograph under preparation focuses on Istanbul\u2019s environmental transformation in the nineteenth century. He has co-edited Istanbul Unbound: Environmental Approaches to the City <\/em>(forthcoming from University of Utah Press), co-curated On the Spot: Panoramic Gaze on Istanbul, a History<\/em>, and co-edited the eponymous edited volume (Pera Museum, 2023). He is the editor of YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies. <\/em>His other exhibition credits include Memories of Humankind: Stories from Ottoman Manuscripts<\/em> (curator, Istanbul Research Institute, 2019) and The Characters of Yusuf Franko: An Ottoman Bureaucrat\u2019s Caricatures<\/em> (advisor and author, ANAMED, 2017). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image credit: London Metropolitan Archives, CLC_B_192_DC_019_Ms31522_260, 170\u2013171, close-up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Date: 27 March 2026 Friday
Time:<\/strong> 12:30-13:30
Place:<\/strong> FFB-05<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2026<\/a>, <\/span>Architectural History+Theory Book Talks<\/a>, <\/span>Lectures<\/a>, <\/span>News & Events<\/a>, <\/span>Research Stories<\/a><\/div>\n\n
Architectural History<\/a>, <\/span>Book Talk<\/a>, <\/span>Theory and Criticism<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 5 June 1870, the heart of Istanbul\u2019s capitalist urbanization, Pera, was ravaged by one of the most disastrous fires in the city\u2019s history. Killing thousands of people (and uncounted nonhumans) and destroying large swathes of the built environment, the Great Fire of 1870 has so far not been investigated in its material complexity and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[251,186,7,6,129],"tags":[135,246,161],"class_list":["post-9490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-251","category-architectural-historytheory-book-talks","category-lectures","category-news","category-research-stories","tag-history","tag-book-talk","tag-theory-and-criticism"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arch.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arch.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arch.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arch.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arch.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arch.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9492,"href":"https:\/\/arch.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9490\/revisions\/9492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arch.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arch.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arch.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arch.bilkent.edu.tr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}