Ali Saim Ülgen (1913–63), a preservation architect, architectural historian, author, bureaucrat and educator, was a leading figure in the nascent field of heritage conservation during the early decades of the Republic of Turkey. This was a time when the Republican leaders sought to establish the national character of art and architecture by interpreting the “Turkishness” and uniqueness of the Ottoman heritage through the tenets of the Modern Movement. The reconciliation of the modernist rationale with nationalist historiography created contested paradigms in a nation searching for its cultural roots. Ülgen considerably contributed to the nationalist appropriation of the Ottoman heritage, but his taxonomical gaze stands out for its focus on contextual analysis. This essay addresses the dichotomy of documenting the Ottoman architectural patrimony through the lens of modernism, which is visible in Ülgen’s work, a remarkably understudied Republican intellectual.

For centuries, measured drawings have been the major communication medium to acquire an understanding of the built environment and to deliver ideas of construction and design. The value of measured drawings as educational tools to learn about the architectural context as well as signifiers of the cultural values have transcended the importance of these two-dimensional illustrations as ephemeral depictions of building forms and materials. In the midst of an architectural culture increasingly utilizing three-dimensional virtual surrogates along with the state-of-the-art surveying and representation methodologies, however, the production of measured drawings have been relegated to a narrower focus in the documentation projects. The methodological path to produce measured drawings carries similar traits with how ethnographers create thick descriptions of cultural signifiers. Reflecting on measured drawings as an account of "thick description," this essay addresses architectural documentation.

Architectural documentation is a contextual study that aims to record patterns of lives and rudiments of civilization embedded in the built environment. Documenters collect measurements from historic surfaces and then transcribe these field data into 2D measured drawings that include existing architectural, material and structural conditions. Although the documentation activities seem very straightforward, with a series of actions to portray the architectural heritage through graphical records, the process itself is an interpretive account of the historic structure, which documenters thickly describe in the architectural context. The act of seeing, observing, interpreting and then capturing the essence of cultural heritage offers a methodical process, which carries significant qualities similar to that of thick description widely used in ethnographic fieldwork. Thinking between architectural documentation as an enquiry of thick description and measured drawings as the product of an interpretive account of what the historic structure denotes, this article seeks to acquire an understanding of drawing in architectural documentation, focusing on engagement with cultural heritage.

The Kara Ahmed Pasha Mosque complex in Topkapı, Istanbul, a sixteenth-century monument, is one of the beacons in the architectural historiography created during the early republican period in Turkey. Noted in Mimar Sinan's autobiographies, the mosque became an academic subject of formalist monographs and research. The early republicans' formalist construct of the historic complex resonated with the theory of modern architecture. Function was not seen as an autonomous facility that had to be connected with other contextual facets but as an internal force through which architectural form emerged. Hence, Sinan's devised form for the mosque was merely conceived as the outcome of the chief architect's rational consideration of function and structure. In return, the formal appreciation of the historic compound devoted itself single-mindedly to the aesthetic properties of architecture and muted contextual analysis as a research inquiry. This essay provides a closer reading of the early republican historiography on the Kara Ahmed Pasha Mosque complex to unveil the formal references that have perpetuated the long-standing understanding of the historic complex.

A measured drawing, by definition, includes the existing condition of the historic building, including graphical notes of alterations, additions and subtractions occurred during the lifetime of the edifice. These particular graphical records annotated with notes and surface measurements inform heritage conservation and research activities. When conducting research on the built environment, repairing a historic material or restoring the building to a significant phase in its life, measured drawings provide the analytical information for physical interventions. With the proclamation of Republic of Turkey in 1923, the nation state became the major steward to protect architectural heritage in a landscape tainted with decades of wars. Measured drawings were prioritized as scientific tools for repairs, physical interventions and methodical classification of historic properties. What has been taken for granted as scientific documentation, however, suited context-independent and historically constructed interpretation of building forms and traditions. Fuelled with the implementation of Turkish History Thesis, the contents of measured drawings could not escape from the formalist understanding of nationalist historiography. The drawings became idealized depictions of perfect monuments, rather than an acute graphical replica of ailing built environment. Reading measured drawings as a graphical arrangement of formalism, this article addresses the early republican desire to invest the built heritage with nationalist inquiries.