2024 Doğan Kuban Seminar

“Doğan Kuban Seminar”, organized by ITU Faculty of Architecture Restoration Program on May 9, 2024, welcomed its visitors at ITU Taşkışla Campus with the theme “Current Conservation Practices” this year.

“Doğan Kuban Seminar”, organized by Istanbul Technical University, Graduate School Restoration Program, was held on May 9, 2024 at ITU Taşkışla Campus, 109 Nezih Eldem Hall.

The seminar, organized in memory of Prof. Doğan Kuban, a doyen of the fields such as history of architecture and conservation practices who graduated from ITU Faculty of Architecture in 1949 and passed away in 2021, focused on the theme “Current Conservation Practices” this year.

In the two panels held within the scope of the seminar, the restoration processes and conservation practices conducted in two important historical buildings, Maiden’s Tower and Terkos Pumping Station, which are part of the cultural heritage of our country, were scrutinized.

About Prof. Doğan Kuban

He was born in Paris in 1926. After graduating from Istanbul Technical University Faculty of Architecture in 1949, he became an assistant at the faculty’s Chair of History of Architecture. In the 1950s, Kuban went to Italy to study Renaissance architecture. In 1962, he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Michigan in the USA on a Fullbright Scholarship. Kuban worked for certain periods in the 1960s and 1970s in Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington D.C. on a scholarship from Harvard University. In 1965, he became a professor with his study entitled Sources and Problems of Anatolian-Turkish Architecture. In 1973-76, he served as the dean of ITU Faculty of Architecture.

He worked for the establishment of the Institute of History of Architecture and Restoration at ITU Faculty of Architecture. He served as the director of the institute, which was established in 1974. A member of the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Kuban published books and articles on Turkish, Islamic and Anatolian architecture and art. In his works, he claimed that Turkish art and architecture should be seen as an original field of creation.

In 2019, he was granted the Presidential Culture and Arts Grand Award in the field of “architecture”. Prof. Doğan Kuban received this award “for his theoretical and conceptual studies on the history of Turkish architecture, restoration activities, his views emphasizing the identity of Turkish works in Islamic architecture, and the books he wrote on these topics”. 

For information about Prof. Doğan Kuban:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSRa-fU-12M&t=470sLink

https://haber.itu.edu.tr/en/newsdetail/2022/09/16/a-life-devoted-to-the-history-of-architecture