Social Memory, Architecture, History, and Theory - An Interview with Uğur Tanyeli

This extensive interview by Erhan Berat Fındıklı with architectural historian and theorist Uğur Tanyeli focuses on Tanyeli's textual output, academic career, and personal life, offering subjective insights into some aspects of Turkey's recent social and cultural history. It also aims to problematize narratives concerning architectural education, the market, historiography, and theory. Through Fındıklı's questions and objections to Tanyeli, new discussion topics are created, and certain fragments of the architectural scene are deconstructed.

"The aim here was to shed light on the recent past of the architecture/sociality relationship in Turkey from the 1970s to the present, to discuss the current theoretical accumulation of architectural history through the spatial and textual productions and individual life stories of different academics, professionals, and amateurs, and at the same time, to encourage new research topics for the future. This interview will have achieved its purpose to the extent that it has created new intellectual areas of tension in architectural history, criticism, and sociology, indirectly contributed to the production of diverse and unique problems, received criticism and objections, both encouraged collective thinking and created an alienating effect, isolating the reader."

Erhan Berat Fındıklı