Fall 2017 seminar: Ph.D. candidate, history of architecture and urban development
Ecem Sarıçayır is a first-year Ph.D. candidate in the History of Architecture and Urban Development program. She graduated in architecture from Istanbul Technical University and participated in a one- year exchange program at Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus-Senftenberg. Drawing on methods developed in contemporary artistic practices, she has completed a master's degree in design at Kadir Has University, Istanbul. Proposing a methodology that stems from architectural and artistic practices for reading in between spaces, her thesis examined border spaces of geographies with ongoing conflict through a series of transnational case studies. Working on the intersections of politics, architecture, urban planning, and history, her research interests revolve around urban and public spaces that are marked by conflictual and political claims. By studying these spaces she attempts to read the contemporary city and its struggles, searching for traces of its history in the city-space of today and exploring propositions for its future. The Mellon Seminar provides her with varied transnational case studies in which different cities and conflictual claims intermingle.