Architecture in Contemporary Literature

"Architecture in Contemporary Literature," edited by Nevnihal Erdoğan, Hikmet Temel Akarsu, and Türkiz Özbursalı, has been published by YEM Publications. This new edition updates the content, cover design, and size of the previously released works, which were published as two separate books titled "Turkish" and "World."

"Architecture in Contemporary Literature" was prepared with the belief that an increased artistic and cultural emphasis in the resources feeding architecture and design will play a significant role in developing society's aesthetic perceptions, and that designers who follow this path can use their imaginations in a much more striking way.
With this approach, literary works from contemporary world and Turkish literature that emphasize architecture, such as Austerlitz, The Fifth Child, The Da Vinci Code, The Lord of the Rings, Concrete Island, The Martian, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, High-Rise, and Ağır Roman, were examined by architects, artists, communicators, philosophers, and academics. These literary works by esteemed authors, along with the architectural universes they created, were presented to readers under various categories with the aim of enriching the imaginative world of all readers, especially architects and designers.

It is recommended that the books in YEM Publications' "Architecture and Areas of Nourishment" series, "Architecture in Cinema, Architecture in Literature, and Architecture in Philosophy," be read alongside this work, as they will be complementary and enrich the reader's imaginative world.

Nevnihal Erdoğan, Hikmet Temel Akarsu, and Türkiz Özbursalı summarize their reasons for preparing the book in the Foreword as follows:

"...The resulting book, 'Architecture in Contemporary Literature,' is undoubtedly not a compilation that flawlessly includes all works in this field. There will undoubtedly be some works that have escaped our notice in the infinite, boundless world of thought and feeling of literature. Undeniably, in the future, there will be those who write and critique these works with much higher quality writing, but it will maintain its characteristic of being the most comprehensive study conducted in contemporary Turkish and world literature in this field to date for a long time... In this selection, we expanded our consultations into very different areas. We gathered opinions from publishers, editors, poets, the architectural intelligentsia, and various literary circles. As a result, among the works we chose, striving for objectivity, there will be some that will truly seem to the reader 'as if they have nothing to do with architecture.' The explanation for why these choices were made stems from the perception that architecture does not consist solely of structural elements. Such that the emotion, scent, aesthetics, chaos, soul, color, flower, language, rituals, history, customs, and traditions of a city can sometimes be components of architecture, creating a different and insatiable aesthetic. We specifically paid attention to including stylistic writers who convey this feeling in our selection..."