Politics of Architecture and Performance

Tracing the intertwined histories of opera, architecture, urbanism, and cultural politics from the early decades of the Turkish Republic, this book shows how opera houses became instruments and arenas of modernization, nation-building, and identity politics. Through a microhistorical narrative centered in Ankara and Istanbul, this volume follows more than a dozen opera projects—built, unbuilt, and transformed—and demonstrates how shifting regimes and cultural agendas materialized in site choices, urban scenography, architectural language, and stage typologies. Grounded in archival sources and spatial analysis and sharpened through international comparison, the book offers an empirically rich account of opera architecture’s political entanglements. Its interpretive framework (cultural transplantation, transduction, and transfusion) captures how cultural forms were adopted, reframed, and negotiated across changing regimes. Along the way, the book highlights bidirectional architectural knowledge exchange between Türkiye and the German-speaking world and connects early republican projects to later debates on heritage, demolition, and reconstruction. With more than 100 architectural graphics, it unfolds as a visual journey through a republic under construction, politically, culturally, and physically. Ultimately, it provides both a timely resource and a transferable analytical perspective for understanding how cultural buildings shape and are shaped by political and cultural change.