Muzaffer Ozgules: Sinan’s Sculptural Architecture in Istanbul - a podcast by ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe

What was Old is New Again. A Meeting of Art and Scholarship | Conference

Fri, 21.11.2008 – Sun, 23.11.2008

Although Islam has prohibited sculpturing, the grand master of all Ottoman architects, namely Sinan, was able to surmount this ban skillfully. He regarded the limitations as a challenge for his creativeness. During his half a century long career as the chief architect of Ottoman Empire, he transformed bridges, aqueducts, small buildings, and grandiose complexes into enduring monuments. The aesthetics of these works went far beyond his contemporaries and his predecessors. Architecture was the language he used to express, not only the religious believes, but also his artistic creativity. By the end of the 16th century, Istanbul, where he gave most of his works, became “Sinan’s Istanbul”. This paper aims to reveal the art and science that is the essence of his achievement.

Every religion, political ideology, philosophy, and scientific theory embodies a set of structured beliefs. These belief systems maintain a symbiotic liaison with the arts. Throughout history, communal beliefs have relied on music, theater, painting, and dance in order to propagate accepted doctrines, and the arts in turn have shaped the articles of faith.
The conference brings together artists and scholars in an unusual forum. The arts addressed deal primarily with media, the major art form that has only come to the fore in recent decades. The scholarship concerns antique matters, such as Sumerian music, early Egyptian medicine, and the omens, codes of law, and creation myths of Mesopotamia. The divergent perspectives of the participants augur well for innovative ideas emerging from this close encounter between scholarship, the arts, and the belief systems of early and modern times.

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