The Philadelphia Chapter Society of Architectural Historians &
The Tyler School of Art & Architecture at Temple Univ present
The Architecture of Instruction In Late Ottoman Istanbul
by Ryan J. Mitchell, PhD Student, Art History, Tyler School of Art & Architecture
Wednesday, December 4 at 6:00 p.m.
In person at Temple’s Charles Library, Event Space/Room 102, 1900 N 13th St, Philadelphia.
(The Event Space is in the library atrium, directly across from the 13th Street entrance to the building.)
Free and open to all. Registration not required.
Questions: info@philachaptersah.org
Focusing on schools constructed in Istanbul and Athens between 1868 and 1900, this paper offers a comparative study of the Greek (also known as Rum) educational institutions, analyzing the various strategies of self-representation at play in their architectural programs. The study compares the shared stylistic language of eclectic classicism that appear in the Zografyon Lyceum (1890) and the Zappeio School for Girls (1885) in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district, as well as related structures within the Ottoman lands and in the then nascent Kingdom of Greece. Shared design choices across ethno-religious communities resident in the late Ottoman Empire created an associative “architecture of instruction,” which will be illustrated through a discussion of the designs of Zografyon and the Zappeio that contextualizes the use of a kind of neo-classicism in Istanbul’s late Ottoman schools as both part of the era’s global patterns of taste, as well as explores the questions of identity at play in the Ottoman sphere. The paper also aims to show how this phenomenon in the built environment inscribed in the urban fabric the imperial bureaucracy’s attempt to unite its diverse population under a common identity constructed on an imagined Helleno-Ottoman past.
Ryan is the 2024 Philadelphia Chapter Society of Architectural Historians George B. Tatum Fellow. Now in the fourth year of his PhD, his research focus on Islamic art and architecture with a concentration on the Ottoman Empire and Eastern Mediterranean in the long nineteenth century.
The Annual Fellowship provides funding for an area student to attend the Annual Society of Architectural Historians International Conference each year. For details on the 2025 Fellowship application see https://philachaptersah.org/index.php/about/
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