RESEARCH PROJECTS
Prescribed Modernity:
Hygiene and Architecture as Preventive Medicine in Turkey (1923-1950)
2018 - 25
PhD dissertation @ TU Munich
This research examines how the early republican state in Turkey strategically mobilized architecture and hygiene to legitimize its sweeping political reforms and fuel cultural change. In the wake of empire, the new regime embraced a modernist program where scientific authority—particularly medical discourse—became a powerful tool. My dissertation looks at how architecture was framed as a form of preventive medicine, used not just to fight disease but to shape citizens, instill new values, and embody the ideals of a secular nation. Drawing on medical texts, architectural publications, propaganda materials, and popular media from the 1920s to 1950s, I explore how seemingly neutral concerns like cleanliness, light, and ventilation were in fact deeply political. From sanatoria to elementary schools to domestic manuals, health became a language through which the state could promote national unity, gender roles, and rural development—while suppressing dissenting narratives from the late Ottoman period. By reading buildings and spatial prescriptions as cultural artifacts, I show how science was not merely applied to architecture, but actively shaped and reshaped to serve the republic’s ideological ambitions.
1st supervisor/examiner: Andres Lepik (TUM)
2nd supervisor/examiner: Annmarie Adams (McGill)
3rd examiner: Kıvanç Kılınç (IZTECH)
mentor: Nurçin Ileri
Between Medicine and Architecture in Mid-Century Turkey:
Ankara’s Atatürk (Keçiören) Sanatorium
2023 - ongoing
VEKAM (Koç University Ankara Studies Research Center) Research Award
In collaboration with Deniz Avci
This project focuses on the spatial and institutional evolution of Ankara’s Atatürk (Keçiören) Sanatorium, tracing how shifts in tuberculosis treatment and public health policy influenced its design—and vice versa. We’re exploring how architecture and medicine shaped each other in mid-20th-century Turkey, reading the sanatorium not just as a healthcare facility but as a site where global medical trends, local policy, and spatial practices intersected.
publication forthcoming!
This project investigates Turkey’s 20th-century architecture of tuberculosis care by researching, documenting, and critically evaluating buildings designed, constructed, or adapted for convalescence. Drawing on tools from architectural and medical history, we aim to build a broader understanding of how these spaces reflect evolving ideas of illness, healing, and modernity. From remote mountain sanatoria to urban treatment centers, the project maps a largely overlooked heritage shaped by both local healthcare policy and international medical thinking.
selected publications:
Avci-Hosanli, Deniz, and Cansu Degirmencioglu. “From ‘Prototype’ to ‘Model’: Architectural and Spatial Development of Block A (1924–1945) of Istanbul’s Heybeliada Sanatorium.” Frontiers of Architectural Research, 2023.
Avcı, Deniz, and Cansu Değirmencioğlu. “100. Yılda İstanbul Sanatoryumlarına Yeniden Bakmak: Yapı Tipleri ve Veremden Sonraki Yaşamları.” In Cumhuriyet’in 100. Yılında Mimarlık, edited by Şebnem Hoşkara and İpek Akpınar, Vol. 1. Ankara: İdealKent, 2024.
Degirmencioglu, Cansu, and Deniz Avci Hosanli. “Transient yet Settled: The Rooms for Tuberculosis Patients in Turkish Sanatoria.” Res Mobilis 12, no. 16 (July 29, 2023): 58–83.