EMRE AROLAT

The founding Partner and Lead Designer, Emre Arolat comes from a long family tradition of architects. After graduating from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul, Emre joined his parent’s architecture firm, and in 2004, formed his own firm EAA – Emre Arolat Architecture with co-founder Gonca Pasolar.

The founding partner and Lead Designer, Emre Arolat has held a professorship at the International Academy of Architecture and is frequently invited to serve on high-profile juries, and to visiting professorships at various prominent universities and academic institutions worldwide such as the Center for Architecture, the Architecture League of New York, Pratt Institute, Cooper Union, RIBA London. Recently, he was the Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture in 2017 Fall Semester.

Emre received international recognition early on in his career, with the Mies Van der Rohe Award for European Architecture for the Minicity Theme Park in Antalya, Turkey (2004), and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture with the design for the Ipekyol Textile Factory in Edirne, Turkey (2006). More recently, In 2018, his Sancaklar Mosque is awarded with RIBA International Prize.

Along with his architecture practice, Emre Arolat has held a professorship at the International Academy of Architecture and is frequently invited to serve on high-profile juries, and to visiting professorships at various prominent universities and academic institutions worldwide. Recently, Emre was the Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. In 2019, Arolat has been elected as an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). In addition to that, he served at the Steering Committee of Aga Khan Award’s Fourteenth Cycle (2017-2019).

Emre Arolat has collaborated on many projects with fine arts institutions, a notable example being his collaboration with the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV), in which he worked with the organization to co-curate the first Istanbul Design Biennale. Arolat was named co-curator, with Joseph Grima, of the first Istanbul Design Biennial. The exhibition curated by Arolat was titled Musibet, which translates as “disaster” or “calamity.” It was held at the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, where Arolat displayed a wide array of urban situations and proposals that addressed the insurmountable transformations happening in cities both in Turkey and worldwide. He also curated EAA’s, “arch I strata I antioch” exhibition at Time Space Existence Exhibition – a collateral event of the 15th International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia and the “ist-on situations” exhibition at RIBA, London. The exhibition explored a timeline beginning with the mid-19th century that shows key events in the course of the urban stories of London and Istanbul.