Architecture | EMIN ONAT: FOUNDER AND ARCHITECT | Gallery

A Life Born in The Constitutional Era and Continuing into The Republic 1908-1961 | Architecture | Founder

EMIN ONAT: FOUNDER AND ARCHITECT | Architecture

Emin Onat’s identity as an architect began to form in the ETH years in Zurich.

The years M.Emin Halid spent in ETH follow a bright curve of success. It was a great opportunity. His teacher, Otto R. Salvisberg, was not only a well-known and a good designer, but also well-versed in thought on architecture and experienced in its application. He was an architect who gave his own interpretation to the Bauhaus style, enriching it with a simple, functional but plastic emphasis.
M.Emin would learn to seek, experiment with and interpret Modernism from his teacher.

Onat’s functionalist style, that featured in his architecture for a period of five years and brought him more competition projects, began to change under the influence of the ‘rediscovering the traditional’ concept of the era commencing in the 40s.

These years were more of a time of searching for a reference for Onat. The Village Institute project competitions of 1941 must have been a major factor in this orientation. A perspective that attempted to bring together the local with a view opening from a large city to a village environment with rationalist principles was observed in Onat. Onat’s individual approach with the ‘monumental/academic’ style of the Anatolian era intensified in the interpretation of the rationale of Anatolian residential architecture in partnerships with S. Hakkı Eldem. In this era, Onat’s architecture is characterised by a return to Modernism. Onat designed his most notable buildings in this era.

There are four eras of Onat's Architecture with ETH years in Zurich:

ETH years in Zurich 1928-1934
Functional 1934-1938
Local and Nostalgic 1938-1953
A Return to His Roots 1953-1961

	1938-1953 Local and Nostalgic: Kirazlıyayla Prevantorium, Bursa, 1946. This is a big, fully equipped centre built for members of the National Ministry of Education set in mountain pasture surrounded on all four sides by forest.

1938-1953 Local and Nostalgic: Kirazlıyayla Prevantorium, Bursa, 1946. ...Here, Onat added little touches to the functional layout required by a health institution, accomplishing a design to which historical references could be articulated, for example, in the proportions of a courtyard or in the choice of materials. The vernacular quotations observed in the balconies add a texture which is far from people’s objective perception of a hospital.

	1938-1953 Local and Nostalgic: Yapı Kredi Bank, Bursa Branch, 1948. The bank hall in the anterior section of the rectangular mass is a space where elements of a historicist form meet a reinforced concrete structure.

	1938-1953 Local and Nostalgic: Yapı Kredi Bank, Bursa Branch, 1948. ...The design opens the axes of the structure with high windows, and the diagonal stripes on the upper windows in particular make a veiled reference to historical models. This reference is complemented by wide eaves on the exterior.

1938-1953 Local and Nostalgic: Istanbul Palace of Justice, 1951-55. The new Courthouse (former Darülfünun Building) was opened twice to competition after the Palace of Justice was burnt down on the night of 3-4 December, 1933. The first competition closing on 18 April 1947 did not produce a work deemed worthy of application. The project that won the competition when it was reopened in 1949 was the joint project of Architect Emin Onat and S. Hakkı Eldem.