Aylin Kartal is Assistant Professor Doctor in the Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design at Istanbul Nişantaşı University. Her teaching and research focus on the history and theory of architecture and design, with particular interest in architectural modernism and its regional interpretations. She has contributed to publications such as her chapter in Modern İstanbul’u İnşa Edenler (Those Who Built Modern Istanbul), which investigates the architectural production of Sedad Hakkı Eldem and Emin Onat in the urban context of Istanbul. Her recent work explores the parallel trajectories of two architects, Sedad Hakkı Eldem (1908-1988), a pioneer of architectural nationalism in Turkey, and Boris Čipan (1918-2012), a key figure in Macedonian postwar modernism.

In her lecture, Architectural Modernisms of Istanbul: Buildings, Narratives, and Rethinking Linear Periodization, Aylin Kartal presents Istanbul’s modernist architecture as a complex network of competing visions, cultural dialogues, and hybrid identities. Instead of fixed periods, she explores how architects negotiated tradition and novelty, nationalism and internationalism, local identity and global modernity all unfolding simultaneously across the city. By viewing the built environment as living documents, Kartal shows how modernism in Istanbul was continuously reinterpreted and reshaped, reflecting the city’s unique position as a metropolis at the crossroads of history, culture, and capitalist economic dialogue. Her lecture offers a nuanced perspective on Istanbul’s architectural development from the early Republican period to the 1980s, emphasizing the ongoing dialogue between nationalism, modernism, and capitalist economy.