Aleks Istanbullu's architecture is rooted in his personal journey as an expatriate and his quest for belonging.
Born in Istanbul, Aleks went to boarding school in Geneva before attending IIT College of Architecture in Chicago, and moving west to set up his own design practice in Santa Monica, California.
Los Angeles in the 1980s was wide open, offering him a chance to develop his own voice. It was also a nexus of mid-century Modernism -- recalling his training at IIT where European emigrants had reinvented The Bauhaus, and his childhood growing up in Istanbul where new construction welded modernist principles into the Turkish context.
"Los Angeles was as far west as I could go within Western civilization," he says of his move to L.A. "I think of it as a necessary exile: you actually have to be somewhere you're not familiar with, forget all the things you've learned, to find your voice. That's what many people come to L.A. for."
Aleks' design approach combines his training in classic Modernism and respect for history with a Southern California environmental and aesthetic sensibility -- blending elemental and natural concepts, and a playful, sensuous minimalism with intellectual rigor and conceptual clarity.
"My work is very organic," he notes. "It is of the place, contextual, tactile, reflective of the light, the space, the people. It is about flow, process and experience. It comes from caring about people and the environment we live in."
He defines his approach as follows: simplify as much as you can, build as little as you need in order to connect to the human being and achieve the desired effect. "From simplicity comes sustainability," he says. "Such an approach may depart from L.A.'s mainstream culture of size, stylized environments and landmark statements, but it's okay to be quiet. I'm more interested in connecting to the human being at an emotional level."
"I guess you cannot get there unless you've been taken out of your own cultural context," he adds, reflecting on his nomadic experience. "In Turkey I was an Armenian, in Switzerland I was a Turk, in Chicago I was a European, in L.A. I'm considered a classic modernist." Being an outsider affords him independence while influencing his work in a subconscious, subliminal way.
Aleks' multicultural voice translates into the diversity of his portfolio. He relishes working with different clients, scales and product types -- from intimate residences to large commercial or mixed-use projects, community buildings and urban infrastructure work, and from new developments to rehabilitations and adaptive re-use. "It keeps me intellectually stimulated," he says.
His systematic approach to projects is what makes every one of them unique. All follow the same methodology grounded in traditions of proportion and design, yet each reflects the personality of each client. "It's a collaborative process, a unique journey every time. I look for the natural grain of the project and let my clients' creativity inform mine. This, I think, is what makes my architecture emotionally evocative, what makes it authentic."
Echoing a feeling shared by many expatriates, Aleks concludes, "geographic and cultural displacement has fueled my quest for authenticity and my commitment to capturing the unique character of a place."
Written by: Marianne O'Donnell
Written by: Marianne O'Donnell
