Alper Derinboğaz

M.Arch II / Salon Founder / ITU-UCLA

Alper Derinboğaz, winner of the European ‘40 under 40’ Architects Award, has been recognized as an “emerging and influential architect”. Founder of architecture practice Salon, his work investigates the possibilities of the physical environment through the relationship between space and time. His designs vary in scale from museums to installations, united by the desire to uncover and question the essential elements of the site and theme.

Derinboğaz graduated from ITU in 2005 and received the Fulbright Scholarship to study at UCLA, where he won the Graduate Award for his master’s studies. After working in Los Angeles, winning competition prizes, he founded Salon in 2011 as an Istanbul-architectural practice. His first built works were selected for the Best Architecture Collection of the year and Derinboğaz received the Arkitera Young Architect Award in 2011. He was shortlisted in YAP Program of MOMA and Istanbul Modern, and won the Plan Award for Innovative Architecture in 2015. His recent work Antalya Green Hub was awarded Green Good Design by The Chicago Athenaeum in 2018. His work has also won the German Design Award by the German Design Council.

Derinboğaz represented Turkey in its debut year at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014 with his work ‘Modalities of the Spontaneous’, an in depth study of the urban transformation of Istanbul. His work in Istanbul frequently engages with layers of memory, such as the adaptive re-use project Fitaş Passage, which gives new life to an original arcade building on Istiklal Street. Derinboğaz’s museum works draw on interpretations of local history, topography and architectural form. The most significant of these will be the new Museum of Istanbul: framing the past and future of the city, it engages the site next to the ancient Land Walls in Topkapı and proposes a new structure for the city’s twelve-thousandyears of history. As Derinboğaz leads his architectural practice, he also teaches a design studio at ITU.