Aslihan Demirtas Architecture and Research Office

Aslihan Demirtas  is an architect and the principal of the interdisciplinary studio Aslihan Demirtas Design & Research Office, based in New York and Istanbul. Her practice purposefully crosses territories and boundaries of disciplines in the forms of building, landscape and installation projects, exhibitions, and art projects, as well as research. Demirtas holds a Master of Science in Architectural Studies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Architecture from the Middle East Technical University, Turkey. Before establishing her own practice she has worked with I.M. Pei as the lead designer for the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar and the Miho Chapel in Kyoto, Japan. She has published articles in Thresholds and WORK, as well as chapters featured in Anytime (MIT Press), In-Transit (Verlag der Bauhaus), and the book Landscapes of Development: The Impact of Modernization Discourses on the Physical Environment of the Eastern Mediterranean (Harvard University Press). She has participated in conferences at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, MIT, and Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany. Her work has been exhibited at SALT, Istanbul and Ankara; Pratt Manhattan Gallery; the Aronson Gallery; and NTHCCC, in New York. Demirtas currently teaches design studios at Parsons School of Constructed Environments and Istanbul Bilgi University. She is a recipient of Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts grant (2013).