Ladakh

Hmmm.....where shall we go today?

Color....

...from another continent.

I'd rather be traveling on a day like this.

The Ladakh Region, in India

Istanbul - Kapalıçarşı

Traveling in Ladakh

Summer Traveling - Istanbul

Houses along the Bosphorus.

Traveling in Ladakh

An image from India, the Ladakh Region. Photo taken by Basar Girit, some five years ago.

Summer Traveling - Medusa in the Cisterns

Summer Traveling

Summer Traveling - Istanbul

Summer Traveling - Finlandia Archipelago

Summer Traveling - Tammisaari

We visited my aunt's summer cottage, which is located on an island off the coast of Finland and about two hours from Helsinki. The island on which they live can only be reached by boat, and the closest town is Tammisaari. This is the view from their little dock.

Summer Traveling - Agia Sophia

I don't think the work on this structure will ever come to completion.

Summer Traveling - The Islands off the Coast of Istanbul

Summer Traveling - Istanbul

Summer Traveling - Helsinki at Midnight

Summer Traveling

Well, I don't have any new projects to report as of yet, so I'm going to post some photos of where I've been able to go this summer. My husband and I took a trip to with both family and friends, a long needed and long awaited frenetic adventure through the woodlands of Finland, the wilds of Istanbul and various villages of Turkey. It was such a great pleasure traveling with friends, particularly friends who happen to know their cities inside and out, that we've vowed to do it more often. And since coming back, I've found myself flipping through my photo album over and over again. So instead of waiting to post images of some new projects we are currently working on, I'm going to start a new series of photos of where I've been and what I've seen.

Textures in Islamic Spain - Part 2

Textures in Islamic Spain

The Mosque Series

60" x 60"

The Ceilings Series
10" x 90"

I will begin posting photographs from my travels to Southern Spain based on a project I was working on between 2007 and 2008. The trip was funded through the Deborah J. Norden Fund Travel Grant given out through the Architectural League of New York, and in late November I gave a lecture regarding these travels at The Urban Center in Midtown. These photograph series were a part of my presentation. There are ten of these series that I developed, and they will be posted over time.

My project was based on researching ornament throughout the buildings and cities of what was once an Islamic center in Europe [the Mosque of Cordoba and the Alhambra being the more obvious structures]. The original intention as I was beginning this project was to explore the concept of tolerance as it was represented through ornament and ornamentation in Andalucia. After vising the lands and delving deeper into its rich history, this concept broadened, and the role of toleration took on more complex flavors. I became interested in how this concept of toleration could be read into the variety of built forms and histories of the Andalucian empires.