Patterns of the first female architect to build a mosque: Nermin Ozkok,
Istanbul, Turkey
This was the first time I was in the house of a living architect, not as a friend or an acquaintance, but as an interviewer. I was excited yet terrified. Would I understand the architect talk? Even though I was with my project partners who are architects, I still felt the pressure.
Furthermore, just to add to the mix, this architect was no ordinary architect (if there is a such a thing), she is the first female architect to build a mosque, ever, from ground up including its interior design.
Nermin Ozkok is a Turkish architect in her late 50s. She has been in the profession for over 30 years. Her 10-year work, Deva Ulu Mosque opened in Sekerpinar, Turkey in 2012. Besides pressing her way into a niche predominantly occupied by men architects, what makes her work interesting is the persistent use of tessellations in her buildings.
Deva Ulu Mosque is a modern design, trading a dome with 4000 led lights. The lights are composed in such a way that they create a perception of depth. As far as I can understand, this is a huge decision as in Turkish and Ottoman traditions of architecture, a dome is almost synonymous with a mosque. Meanwhile, the mosque itself embraces modern tessellations which gives a feeling of continuation of tradition.
Ozkok has been intrigued by geometric designs since her childhood, which she spent in Sultanahmet. She would spend her time studying the patterns at buildings near the old town, and watch her mom do intricate lace work. She showed us her first work when she did while in primary school.
This was the very moment we learned something very interesting from her: most floral designs on tiles are in deed geometric designs which are augmented with floral constituents, simple drawings of petals, flowers, and leaves that you would add to certain places once you trace underlaying geometric pattern. So from a mathematical perspective, there is a one to one transformation from a geometric pattern to a floral design. How delightful!
Ozkok uses tessellations in all her work. When we asked her what she thought of the place of tradition in modern design, she had a clear voice: without studying the past, you cannot build the future. She herself studies the architecture tradition constantly, and learns something new everyday. My interpretation of what she said was that she takes in all what she learns, mixes it with her creativity and composes it for our time, with a touch of experimentation.
However, although she uses tessellations heavily, the process is very labor intensive. It requires transferring hand drawn patterns to the computer and further manipulating them by hand on CAD programs. This is where I felt reassured about our goal: if we can streamline this process with an open source library, more buildings with historical tessellations can rise into the future.
And Ozkok liked the idea. We now have one prospective user, and not any user, we have Nermin Ozkok!
