Built heritage, culture and nation: Ali Saim Ülgen (1913-1963)

Abstract

This thesis examines the construction of the conceptions of heritage, culture and nation during the Early Republican period through the archive of Ali Saim Ülgen in SALT Research. Ali Saim Ülgen, as an architect, conservation and restoration theorist, writer and academician, made important studies in the fields of architectural history writing and preserving monuments and antiquities. The socio-political dynamics of the period when he did his scholarly studies are remarkable in terms of the cultural policies in the Early Republican Period, so his studies are inseparably from the nationalist ideology and heritage. Ülgen's lecture notes and published and unpublished works contain remarkable expressions in the historiographical discourse about the characteristics of Turkish art and architecture. In addition to his nationalist, anti-orientalist and occasionally conservative views in architectural historiography, Ülgen's literary, institutional and practical studies in the field of preservation and restoration reflect his view regarding historical heritage through monuments.