Emre Arolat Receives Faith & Form 2019 Honor Award
Emre Arolat’s Sancaklar Mosque (Photo Credit: Cemal Emden)
NEW YORK –Faith & Form magazine, alongside Interfaith Design, announced that architect Emre Arolat, RIBA, Hon. FAIA, has received a 2019 Honor Award in the category of Sacred Landscape for the innovative Sancaklar Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. The 2019 Design Awards Jury was chaired by Kathleen Lane, Associate AIA.
“I am thrilled to have been honored by Faith & Form Magazine and Interfaith Design with this award,” said Arolat.
“I wanted to go back to essence of the ritual of worship in Islam by designing a space that is freed from the cultural burdens that have ruled the mosque design for centuries. Design of Sancaklar Mosque can be defined through humbleness; this is a mosque that blends in the place and does not show any particular building form or shape for the eye of the approaching visitor —one descends through steps merged into the topography and then reaches to the entrance. This approach is carried on in the interiors with the honesty of materials —the only decoration is the light that washes the exposed concrete walls.”
The Annual Religious Art and Architecture Design Awards program is co-sponsored by Faith & Form Magazine and Interfaith Design (ID), a Knowledge Community of the American Institute of Architects. The Awards program was founded in 1978 with the goal of honoring the best in architecture, liturgical design, and art for religious spaces. The program offers three primary categories for awards: Religious Architecture, Liturgical/Interior Design, Sacred Landscapes, Unbuilt Work, Religious Arts, and Student Work.
Winning entries will be published in the Winter 2019 Awards Issue of Faith & Form magazine. An exhibition of award-winning projects will be displayed at the 2020 National Convention of the American Institute of Architects in Los Angeles, California, May 14-16, 2020.
About EAA – Emre Arolat Architecture
Founded by Emre Arolat and Gonca Pasolar in 2004, EAA-Emre Arolat Architecture focuses on a wide range of work including urban master plans, airports, residential and cultural buildings, and workplaces. EAA, with a long family tradition, has become one of the largest architectural offices in Turkey, and has expanded to offices in London and New York. Emre Arolat Architecture believes in fully exploring and researching the socio-political context of all projects, and is committed to executing thoroughly researched work.
EAA’s projects have been displayed in many notable institutions, such as the Design Museum and Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Royal Institute of British Architecture, and at numerous International Architecture Biennales in Venice and Istanbul. The firm’s work has received international recognition, including selected work with the Mies van der Rohe Award, the Aga Khan Award, and the RIBA Award for International Excellence 2018.
EAA has published a compilation of its latest works in Context and Plurality with Rizzoli New York in 2014, the sequel, Global and Local/ New Projects/EAA-Emre Arolat Architecture will be published in Spring 2020, with Rizzoli Electa.
EAA’s wide-ranging repertoire includes the renovation and adaptive reuse of Antrepot 5 in Istanbul as the new place for Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture (2019); a marina complex; Yalikavak Marina, on the shores of Yalikavak, Bodrum (2014); the Antakya Museum Hotel, built above an existing archeological site in Antakya (2019); the SantralIstanbul Contemporary Art Museum, (2006); and the two terminals Domestic&International of Dalaman Airport (2006 and 2019), among others.
For more information about EAA-Emre Arolat Architecture, please visit www.emrearolat.com.
About Emre Arolat, Hon. FAIA, RIBA
Born in Ankara, Turkey, Emre Arolat comes from a long family tradition of architects. After graduating from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul, Emre joined his parent’s architecture firm, and in 2004, formed his own firm EAA – Emre Arolat Architecture with co-founder Gonca Pasolar.
Emre Arolat has lectured and taught at design schools around the world, and was recently named Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. Arolat also held a professorship at the International Academy of Architecture. In 2019, He was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Arolat has also served at the Steering Committee at the 14th cycle (2017-2019) of Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Emre Arolat has collaborated on many projects with fine arts institutions, a notable example being his collaboration with the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, in which he worked with the organization to co-curate the first Istanbul Design Biennale
