24.06.2021 | 17.00 CET | A TSN Spring Series Lecture by Esra Akcan

This lecture explores architecture’s role in an extended notion of transitional justice and in healing societies after intense upheavals and internal conflicts. The concept of transitional justice emerged as accountability for large scale past abuses came to the forefront of grassroots human rights movements after the late 1970s, and entered the lexicon of international law in the 2000s. Transitional justice is “the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with a legacy of large scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation.” This lecture explores architectural programs of reparation by defining a healing space as one where political harm is confronted. It particularly raises the right-to-heal after major unaccounted traumas in the history of Turkey, such as enforced disappearance and compulsory mass migration, by thinking about architecture’s proactive role in reparative justice.  The lecture is part of Akcan’s work-in-progress for her upcoming book Right to Heal. 

Esra Akcan is Michael A. McCarthy Professor of Architectural Theory, Department of Architecture at Cornell University.

Akcan’s research on modern and contemporary architecture and urbanism foregrounds the intertwined histories of Europe and West Asia and offers new ways to understand architecture’s role in global, social, and environmental justice. Her book Architecture in Translation advocates a commitment to a new culture of translatability from below and in multiple directions for cosmopolitan ethics and global justice. Turkey: Modern Architectures in History (w.Bozdoğan) is part of a series that aims at an inclusive survey of modern world architecture. Open Architecture: Migration, Citizenship and Urban Renewal exemplifies formal, programmatic, and procedural steps towards open architecture during Berlin’s urban renewal by giving voice to both architects and immigrant residents. Ackan is also the author Landfill Istanbul and Building in Exile: Bruno Taut in Turkey (w.Nicolai), and the upcoming Abolish Human Bans. Currently, she is writing Right-to-Heal: Architecture in Post-Conflict and Post-Disaster Societies. Her articles explore critical and postcolonial theory, immigration, translation, racism, architectural photography, neoliberalism, and global history.