Abstract:

Focusing on Ottoman architecture from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this talk analyses how buildings were designed in relationship to nature and climate, with an emphasis on water. Water features such as fountains and basin, both indoors and in liminal courtyard spaces, supplied by aqueducts, cisterns, and open domes were deployed to create a complex connection between the built and natural environment. This talk will integrate the study of architecture, poetry and inscriptions, and approaches in eco-critical art history to provide new insights into these relationships.

Kurzbio:

Patricia Blessing is Associate Professor of Art History at Stanford University. Blessing is the author of Rebuilding Anatolia after the Mongol Conquest: Islamic Architecture in the Lands of Rūm, 1240–1330 (Ashgate, 2014) and Architecture and Material Politics in the Fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2022). With Elizabeth Dospel Williams and Eiren Shea, she co-authored Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300-1400 for the Cambridge Elements series Global Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2023). She is the Managing Editor of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture.