Elif Kaymaz

Elif Kaymaz

Elif Kaymaz is a Ph.D. candidate in Architectural History at Middle East Technical University (METU), where she also works as a research assistant. Her dissertation, Architectures of Anticipation, explores how the expectation of war transformed urban governance, spatial discourses, and public imaginaries in Turkey during the interwar and WWII years. She is the publishing editor of the Journal of the Faculty of Architecture. With a City and Regional Planning background, her research focuses on wartime urbanism, urban rituals, spaces and practices of film exhibition, and digital humanities within the scope of late 19th- to mid-20th-century architecture and urban history.

Dossiers, no. 2, vol. 10

Nocturnal Architectures of Allure: On Celebration and Illumination in Early 20th Century Turkey

What happens when the night becomes a stage for nationalism? Tracing the nocturnalization of national day celebrations, Elif Kaymaz argues that choreographed lightscapes reshaped urban space to cultivate emotions of unity, pride, and festive allure, offering citizens of early Republican Turkey not just a spectacle to watch but a space to inhabit.