proje501
6
interview
serter karataban
Serter Karataban, in his office © Emrullah Çakmaz
Was it your dream to be an architect?
So how did you react?
No, in fact, I wanted to be an engineer just like my brother and to study at İstanbul Technical University, but back in the day, we would decide and select our universities to attend before taking the exam. The last evening of the preference list making, after I went to bed, my father had added the department of architecture under mechanical engineering on my list. I didn’t have a vocational goal yet but my aim was to get 520 points in the last year of high school and I got exactly what I aimed. Mimar Sinan University was included in my preference list and I got in with my points. Sometimes your family knows you better than you and now I can say that I have studied at that school and fortunately I have become an architect.
It was fine by me, actually. It was a fortune that I did not become a mechanical engineer. But let me tell you something, even if I was a cleaning officer, I would try to be the best, I thought about the differences, I would try to create a social benefit. I would try to communicate at a high level again, I would look for ways to understand people. In my belief, everyone should do whatever they desire; but do it in the best way they can. I do not fancy people doing their jobs just because they have to. How was your student years? Were there any people you followed especially in those years? In my time, we were not aware who was a good and who was a bad architectin Turkey. In my freshman
