PhD | Binghamton University
MArch | METU
BArch | METU
Courses Taught
LAUD 471 | Urban Sociology
LAUD 474 | Space, Culture and Identity
LAUD 476 | Visual Politics of Space
ARCH 321 | Architecture and Society
FA 101–102 | Basic Design I–II
Bülent Batuman
Associate Professor
Bülent Batuman studied architecture at the Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey) and received his M. Arch degree from the same university in 2000. He received his Ph.D. in History and Theory of Art and Architecture from Binghamton University in 2006. He worked at Mersin University between 2006 and 2009, where he taught architectural design and cultural politics of modern urbanism. His research areas include social production and politics of built environment, history and theory of modern architecture and urbanism and urban politics. His articles have been published in various journals including Journal of Architecture, Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of Urban History, Urban Studies, Urban Design International, Cities, Political Geography and METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture. His current research focuses on the architectural politics of Islamism in Turkey and his latest book New Islamist Architecture and Urbanism: Negotiating Nation and Islam through Built Environment in Turkey was published by Routledge in 2018. He is member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Urban History and Praksis. He has also served at the executive boards of the Chamber of Architects Ankara Branch (2010-2014) and the Architects' Council of Europe (2013-2014). He was a Fulbright visiting scholar at Penn State University in the 2017-18 academic year.
Highlights
In his new book, Dr. Bülent Batuman turns a spatial and political lens on the present, asking how cities and architecture take shape under conditions of crisis. He writes against a global backdrop of neoliberal upheaval, war, migration, post-truth populism, and ecological decline, and, closer to home, Turkey's deepening economic crisis, its charged elections, and the devastation of the 2023 earthquakes. Across these settings, he reads the built environment as a field where political power becomes visible and is contested.
The book is organized in three parts. “City, Crisis, Politics” traces contemporary urban populism through cases ranging from Singapore and the Qatar 2022 World Cup to the ongoing transformation of Turkey's largest cities. “The Politics of Destruction” moves through the earthquake regions to examine disaster urbanism, reconstruction, and the politics of memory, extending the concept of urbicide from Berlin to Gaza. “Authoritarian Construction and Resistance” considers the ideological role of housing, the architectural representation of power, contested sites such as AOÇ and Ankapark, and practices of public space from Gezi Park to Saraçhane.
Read on Bilkent NewsDr. Bülent Batuman leads this research project, funded by the TÜBİTAK 1001 Programme, on the relationship between urbanization policies and earthquake vulnerability in the small and medium-sized cities of Turkey.
Focusing on the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes, the project studies five cities of different scales across the affected region: Antakya, Adıyaman, Elbistan, İslahiye, and Gölbaşı. Through these cases, it asks how patterns of urban growth and planning decisions shape the risks communities face, and what this reveals about the links between how cities develop and how they withstand earthquakes.