A Mansion In Şişli And Architect Giulio Mongeri

Giulio Mongeri is an important figure who has played an active role during the late Ottoman period and the early years of the Republic both with his architectural work and as an educator. As an architect, he is among the most significant representatives of the First National Architectural Movement in the Republican Era, with the buildings he has designed in Istanbul and Ankara. The “Mongeri House” on Dr. Şevket Bey Street in Şişli, known today by the name of its architect, holds a special place among the many structures belonging to Mongeri, in that it is one of the rare examples of residential architecture in Istanbul, designed by him in the First National Architectural style.

In her book A Mansion in Şişli and Architect Giulio Mongeri, Özlem İnay Erten examines the “Mongeri House” – one of the significant works of the Italian architect, and its importance in terms of architecture, art history and sociology. In doing so, she has reserved considerable space for a section focusing on the life story of Giulio Mongeri, which relates the architect’s work to his life. This has therefore also become one of the most comprehensive studies on the life of Mongeri, which has remained disregarded in written culture up until today.

We follow the tale of the “Mongeri House” in this book, from the moment of its construction commissioned by the Sadıkoğlu family in 1925, to its becoming the first private birth clinic in Turkey, then a school and a bank, all the way up to 2007 when it was bought by Dr. Şükrü Bozluolçay and transformed into an art space under the name “Bozlu Art Project”. In this voyage, we also see many unknown facts about Mongeri’s life revealed. This is also thanks to the fact that Erten has often made use of one-on-one interviews with Mongeri’s relatives and historians specializing on the era, along with written sources during her study.

Enriched with visuals, sections on the historical background of the era, and a foreword written by Prof. Zeki Sönmez for this book, this study has thus become a gripping work on a name much overlooked in written sources until now, and a valuable academic source on its subject matter.