Submitted by Jonathan Budd
Development of Thinking and Theory in Architecture, a lecture by Suha Özkan
Architecture News - Jun 11, 2009 - 09:22 10831 views
An Essay on a presentation by Suha Ozkan to Diwan al-Mimar on October 21, 2001. In this presentation to Diwan al-Mimar, Suha Ozkan {1} presented his explorations of the development of thinking and theory in architecture that he has carried out over the past thirty years. The exploration was prompted by his appointment as an instructor in architecture at the Middle East Technical University {METU} in Ankara upon completing his master’s degree there in urban design in 1969. As he undertook the challenges of teaching, Ozkan felt a strong need to develop a comprehensive understanding of architectural theory that would aid him as a teacher and researcher. He also studied at the Architectural Association where he produced a thesis entitled “General Conceptual Framework for Methodology of Design.” He finished his Ph.D. at METU in 1980, which was entitled “A Categoric Structure for Theory of Design.” Ozkan emphasized that he very much was influenced by the overall developments that were taking place at the time when he began teaching. It was just before the jumbo jet was invented; a number of satellites already were in orbit, and important achievements generally were being realized in science and technology. Also, new social values were coming into being. The social consciousness movement was being formed, and it was the period just prior to the 1968 student revolts in Paris, with which Ozkan sympathized. It generally was a period of anticipation and energy. As for his own intellectual background, he was brought up in the spirit of positivism, as opposed to speculation and artistry. Consequently, his academic and intellectual upbringing emphasized the belief that theology and metaphysics are earlier imperfect modes of knowledge, and that positive knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations as verified by the empirical sciences. For Ozkan, positivism meant that theory should inform practice. He explained that in architecture, all speculations, writings, and essays are considered theory, and he noted that every architect who wrote seems to have a theory - a situation that does not apply to the natural sciences. He gave physics as an example. Not every physicist has a theory; instead many make contributions to the development of a theory. The same is true of mathematics and other sciences. Ozkan started his exploration of the theory of architecture with the premise that whatever does not belong to a building, whatever is externalized in the form of literature - to explain the point of view of an architect, philosopher, or theorist, thus informing the practice of architecture - should belong to the realm of theory. Ozkan then began compiling these writings, starting with the earliest available examples, which are the writings of Marcus Pollio Vitruvius from the 1st century BC, up to contemporary theories such as Deconstruction. Ozkan added that during this period he also started to take courses in the philosophy of science. In 1969, he went to London to study at the Architectural Association.&n
www.csbe.org/e_publications/theory_in_architecture/essay1.htm
www.csbe.org/e_publications/theory_in_architecture/essay1.htm