Vedat Dalokay

Architect  (Born 10 November 1927, Elazığ – Death 21 March 1991, Kırıkkale). He completed his primary, secondary and high school education in Elazığ. He graduated from Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Architecture in 1949. He worked between 1950 and 51 in Post Office Department and Ministry of Public Works as an architect. During his postgraduate in Urbanism Institute at Sorbonne, Paris between 1951 and 52, he worked in offices of famous architects such as Auguste Perret and Le Corbusier. He won in 1953 Eskişehir Porsuk Hotel (nowadays Officer’s Club) competition. He founded in 1954 Dalokay Architecture Workshop at Ankara.  

Dalokay participated to numerous project competitions. He won 24 awards; 13 of them were first place. Among these important structures which brought awards to Dalokay were Electrical Power Resources Survey and Development Administration in Ankara (1955), Kocatepe Mosque (1956) and Turkish Standards Institution (1964). Apart from those, he received the first place in project competitions such as Jiddah Islamic Development Bank Headquarter (Saudi Arabia, 1980), Prime Ministry Complex (Pakistan, 1984) and Islamabad King Faisal Mosque (Pakistan 1970) which granted him the International Aga Khan Architecture Award and in which 70.000 people can pray together.

In his structural designs Dalokay is in search of new forms which go beyond the traditional patterns. His project for Ankara Kocatepe Mosque prepared in harmony with modern technology could not be realized due to the pressure of certain environments with the reason of being contradictory to the conventional mosque image. Instead of this, the structure whose foundation was poured was turned into today’s mosque which has the characteristics of Classical Age Ottoman mosques. Dalokay prepared a work beyond traditional patterns also during the design of King Faisal Mosque (1970), and developed a proposal which does not repeat classical mosque form with domes, but uses concrete properly.

Aside from architecture applications, Dalokay was also active in professional societies. Between 1964 and 68 he was Branch Chairperson of Chamber of Architects and Secretary-General of Chamber of Architects in Ankara and between 1973 and 77 Mayor of Ankara. In various professional journals he wrote essays about urbanization, shanty, municipalism and religious architecture. After a traffic accident on the 21^st of March 1991 near to Kırıkkale he and his wife passed away.

Dalokay who was also interested in literature received the Turkish Language Society’s Children Literature Prize in 1980 with his children’s story called Kolo. In 1995 he received Mildred L. Batchelder Prize given by the American Library Association. Kolo was translated to English, German and Danish.