SCGMA

Nina Ergin: all the senses

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 | Workshops | 1 Comment

For this Istanbul/Constantinople workshop, Nina Ergin traveled all the way from Koc University in Turkey back to UMN where she had attended her grad school. Ergin’s presentation focused on the olfactory, and audio aspects of the Ottoman Mosque Architecture, touching even on some taste elements of such spaces.
Her presentation stressed how a multi-sensorial portrait of the Ottomanist period is at the same time a multi-layered history of the built environment of that period.

In the particular case of smell, the smellScape of sixteenth-century Ottoman mosques can be partially reconstructed based on documents such as charters about the administration and upkeep of the mosque complexes, which can be found in several archives in Turkey. These charters often document the employment of buhurcus or buhuris, who perfumed the mosque on holy days. The odors that worshippers sensed in the mosques included lamps fueled by olive oil and wooden Qur’an chests.
Ergin made a very interesting comment on the risk of losing sight of the urban quality of these architectural spaces in the (often shiny and perfect) spatial representation enabled by 3D software and architectural software. She noted that graffiti for example, was a urban element of such period, which is largely absent from 3D digital reproductions of these spaces.
By Ana Boa-Ventura

Tags: Koc University, mosques, Nina Ergin, Ottoman, Senses, smell, sound, taste