"The difference between places and times no longer seems to matter," says New York-based architect, designer and professor, Ferda Kolatan. "My generation believed that a design looked a certain way because of its region, its time, or its environmental and historical context. Now we see a collaging of ideas that belong to vastly diverse places and periods.
The liberties many students today take in cross-referencing elements from different eras and styles is a unique and fascinating feature of our contemporary times." With his firm, SU11, and his academic practice, Ferda is exploring this concept of authenticity without originality. "What is the potential for architecture and design when chronological and stylistic continuities no longer matter, and notions of ‘origin’ appear to have been lost?"
Of Turkish heritage and raised in Germany, Ferda first studied architecture in what he says was a traditional modernist paradigm in Aachen before moving to New York in the mid '90s to study at Columbia. He was interested in carving out a contemporary identity and says the emerging work at Columbia awakened his curiosity. Since then, he has seen and experienced several ideological shifts in the industry.