ABSTRACT
Viewed from a historical angle, the answer may well be that great architecture was created in the past without an awareness of the process which gave it birth. It is highly likely that Sinan, the most celebrated Ottoman architect, when designing the extensive complex of the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne of 1569 –75, for instance, was aware of his Byzantine predecessors without analysing that awareness or drawing any general
he was continuing an existing tradition which he saw embodied in Hagia Sophia of over a thousand years earlier or whether he was innovating and establishing a significant variant on what had gone before. The present day view is that ‘it is no exaggeration to say, that with this building Turkish mosque architecture reached its fullest expression’ (Vogt-Göknil, 1993, p.81); that Edirne was the culmination rather than the inception of a movement. It is also difficult to imagine that Sinan could ever have guessed that at the beginning of the 21st century it would be the great range of kitchens at the Topkapi Serai in Istanbul with their dominant conical lead-faced roofs which would be influential – both consciously and unconsciously – in the design of stack-effect ventilators on energy conscious buildings.
