Turgut Cansever was a Turkish architect and city planner.
18 Facts About Turgut Cansever
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Turgut Cansever is the only architect to win the Aga Khan Award for Architecture three times.
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Turgut Cansever was born in Antalya in 1921 to Hasan and Saime Ferit, the eldest of five children.
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Turgut Cansever's father, Hasan, was an intellectual and prominent physician who served on the Sina Front during the war, while his mother, Saime, was a teacher from Plovdiv.
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Turgut Cansever's parents fostered his early interest in art, religion, and education, values that deeply influenced his work and writings throughout his life.
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Turgut Cansever attended primary school in Ankara and Bursa before moving with his family to Istanbul, where he completed his education at Galatasaray High School.
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In 1949, Turgut Cansever completed his groundbreaking doctoral thesis, Stylistic Analysis of Ottoman and Seljuk Column Heads, which covered 14 Anatolian cities and 111 structures.
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Turgut Cansever began his architectural career with the restoration of Sadullah Pasa's waterfront mansion in 1949.
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Turgut Cansever headed the Marmara Region Planning Organization from 1959 to 1960 and served on the Istanbul Municipality Planning Authority in 1961.
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Turgut Cansever earned the title of associate professor in 1960 with his thesis Problems of Modern Architecture at the Istanbul University Faculty of Letters.
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Turgut Cansever became the only architect to win the Aga Khan Award three times, with his third award in 1992 for the Demir Holiday Village project in Mandalya Bay, which consisted of three hotels and 500 houses, designed in collaboration with Emine Ogun, Mehmet Ogun, and Feyza Turgut Cansever.
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From 1974 to 1975, Turgut Cansever headed the World Bank Istanbul Metropolitan Planning Project.
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Turgut Cansever's health declined in the later years of his life.
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Turgut Cansever was fitted with a pacemaker in 2000 and became bedbound from 2008 onward.
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Turgut Cansever was a notable thinker in the fields of religion and architecture.
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Turgut Cansever argued that the act of judgment, bestowed upon humanity by divine will, enables architects to exercise creativity and originality in their designs.
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Turgut Cansever expressed concerns regarding the state of mosque architecture in the 20th century, particularly within Muslim societies.
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Turgut Cansever criticized the reliance on replication of historical designs and the lack of innovation in contemporary mosque architecture.