Nazimî Yaver Yenal

Nazimî Yaver Yenal
(1904–1987) is a typical representative of the early republican generation that
epitomized idealist principles. Having spent his adolescence in the final years
of the Ottoman Empire, Yenal was trained at the School of Fine Arts,
particularly under the influence of his teacher Giulio Mongeri’s notion of eclecticism
and graduated as valedictorian. Shaped by a series of competitions he won, his
career evolved through the experience he gained in Paris and Berlin, where he
was sent on a state scholarship granted as part of the culture programs of the
early republican years. He thrived and matured during the years he spent as an
instructor at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he grew close with a handful of
avant-garde German architects who ended up together in Istanbul through
extraordinary political circumstances. Described in the letters of Sedad Hakkı
Eldem as being “much ahead,” even in his student years, Yenal had talent beyond
question and a career in architecture that set off quite successfully at first.

Despite all that, virtually none of his designs were actually constructed. His unexecuted designs and unattained hopes relate a powerful tale describing the disappointments and reasons behind never being able to bring his creations to fruition. Eventually falling out of official architectural discourse and forgotten over time, Yenal created for himself an alternative realm of architectural production comprised solely of drawings. The massive archive he created of his drawings was first preserved at his private room at the academy and later in his house following retirement. After his death, it was dispersed.

Yenal’s depictive fantasies and drawings are in flawless command of both the repertoire of classical architecture and modernism; they correspond to imaginary designs entirely free of the factors associated with construction and derive their strength from this freedom. His unconstructed and unshared designs privatize architecture, a public domain of art. Shaped by imagination, the Yenal aesthetic is inevitably defined in connection with personal codes. In providing a real understanding of Yenal’s drawings, this subjectivity forces us to read into not only the designs but also their creator. With his avant-garde sketches remaining only on paper, Nazimî Yaver Yenal is perhaps the most important “paper architect” of Turkish architecture from the republican era.

Nazimî Yaver Yenal’s
designs from his years as a student (1920–1926) at the Sanayi-i Nefise (Imperial
School of Fine Arts) in the 1920s shed light on his search for a style as much as
they do on the architectural proclivities of the period. These drawings allow
us to assess the impact the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris had, as a late nineteenth-century
pedagogical reference point, on the academic education he embraced at the
Imperial School of Fine Arts in the 1930s, the only institution of
architectural education in Turkey at the time. Featuring variations of an
eclectic architectural concept with its roots in the West, this prevailing
methodology was restructured by adapting it to the Ottoman architectural
heritage. The designs developed at the academy were focused more on façade
rather than plan. Their styles notwithstanding, while façades in these drawings
were transformed into ostentatious compositions resembling stage decor, they
also include details referencing a wide range of architectural practices. 

As one of the most successful students of this period, Yenal was trained in the workshops of Vedad (Tek) and Giulio Mongeri at the Sanayi-i Nefise. The majority of his drawings are in historicist style and particularly mention the name of the project instructor with the inscription “O. Nazimî, Élève de M. Mongeri” (O. Nazimî, student of Mongeri). Young Yenal’s school projects are important and rare examples to have survived to date, reflecting extremely well, partially due to his accomplishments throughout his education, the expectations the academy had of its students.

Upon his return to the Academy of Fine Arts in
1932, Yenal found himself in the midst of a reform. The Republic decided to
benefit from the expertise of Western specialists in many fields, and Swiss
architect Ernst Egli was appointed as a professor and the director of the department
of architecture in 1930. With the reforms that he would execute during his
term, radically changing the instructional methods of the school, Egli updated
the academic curriculum for architecture, which dated back to Alexander
Vallaury and would now pave the way for a kind of education based on
contemporary international principles. During the Egli period, modernism
absolutely outweighed classicism in architecture education in Turkey. 

As a consequence of extraordinary political conditions, Yenal became part of the work environment of very important architects, such as Bruno Taut and Martin Wagner, who had once been pioneers of European avant-garde architecture and were now trying to bring to life their architectural projects in Turkey under the mindset of being in exile. Yenal’s first position upon arriving at the academy in 1932 was as instructor of interior architecture and assistant to the Austrian architect Philip Ginther. Yenal continued his career as an instructor until his retirement in 1969. He was a much loved and dedicated teacher. Always wearing a white shirt and holding small pencils in his hand, he continuously strived to encourage his students.

In the Western-oriented
educational setting of the 1920s, Yenal won first prize in the first European
architectural competition organized by the Academy of Fine Arts during the 1927–1928
term: a trip to Paris, followed by Berlin, as a journey to Europe had been a traditional
part of any Turkish intellectual’s education since Ottoman times. Despite the
prevailing art deco movement in Paris, Yenal was more interested in modernism,
which was considered avant-garde at the time. Yenal returned to Turkey in 1930
to complete his military service. In 1931 he moved to Berlin once again on a grant.
He was admitted to Hans Poelzig’s Meister Atelier (workshop-school).
While fully embracing the modernist style he was drawn to in Paris, he grew
closer to the international avant-garde style and detached himself from the
academic eclecticism. 

Yenal’s drawings of this period are all mounted on art deco passe-partouts of different colors. Each one of the drawings bears the signature: “Ö. Nazimi Yaver, Arkitekt - Meister Atelier Professor Hans Poelzig, Technische Hochschule und Akademie der Kunst, Berlin, Charlottenburg.” The drawings in which Nazimî theorized modernism on paper during his Berlin period approach design issues solely as educational experiments. The works do not assume any social mission. They are not speculative. Fantasy never evolves into utopia, carry any intentions of social critique through utopist or dystopian provocations, nor engage in alternative future constructs. The proposals are functional and realistic.

An incident that led Yenal
towards interior and furniture design was the first prize he won at an
important competition: the “Yıldız Palace Istanbul Balkan Conference Furnishings
Project,” organized in 1933 by the Directorate of National Palaces at Yıldız
Palace for the Balkan Conference in Istanbul. Participants were to design furnishings
to be used within the ceremonial hall during conferences. The art deco style Yenal
envisaged for the furniture was using a decorative line based on the rising
trend of national discourse but not incorporating political symbolism, despite
the nationalist political transformation at the time. 

Thus, it was rather convincing, as the architectural language notables of the Republic, eager to catch up with the spirit of modern times, deemed it fit for the urban Turkish bourgeoisie. It was also consistent with the state’s discourse on progress. It was international, and contrary to historicist currents, it offered no references to the Ottoman past.

Modernism culminated in a productive collaboration in which architecture, painting, and industrial design interconnected and architects, artists, sculptors, and carpenters worked in partnership. The interior design drawings in Yenal’s archives articulate modern furniture design as part of a defined space and as a whole, with elements such as lighting fixtures, carpets, and curtains.

Origins of paper
architecture are associated with the works of the Italian Baroque architect
Giovanni Battista Piranesi and late eighteenth-century French architectural
geniuses of the Enlightenment, namely Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Étienne-Louis
Boullée. The term “paper architecture” was first proposed in the 1930s in the USSR,
led by Josef Stalin’s official ideology defending socialist realism, to
criticize and slander the avant-garde Russian architects of the 1920s who
produced abstract works. However, the term gained prestige throughout the twentieth
century and transformed itself to distinguish an independent architectural
practice. The Russian avant-garde artists Stalin oppressed, the Italian
futurists of the 1910s, the technology-loving British utopian architects of the
1960s, and the Russian post-modern generation of the 1980s were influential as
paper architects despite their designs remaining merely on paper. 

As in the case of Yenal’s drawings, the type of architecture that remains unrealized, or more precisely, not intended for construction and thus severing its ties entirely with the objective of implementation, attains the character of “paper architecture.” In the absence of determinants associating architecture with its primary function of construction, such as scale, structure, employer, and budget, what remains are works on paper with an intimate discourse on architecture, the borders of which become vague through painting. Placing the function of the designed building in the background, paper architecture puts architectural drawing at the heart of its narrative and focuses on presentation, representation, and idea. Architectural drawings are one of the basic and permanent elements of architectural culture. According to John Hedjuk, it is the “state of mind” of architecture.