Ezgi Isbilen

Ezgi İşbilen, Ph.D. is an architect and design scholar whose work investigates modern architecture through questions of universalism, systems, construction logics, and the cultural and political dimensions of environmental design. Her research focuses on twentieth-century architectural theory and history, with particular attention to prefabrication, open systems, desert urbanism, and the technological imagination of modernity. Her doctoral dissertation, Universalism and Its Discontents: Konrad Wachsmann’s 20th Century Architecture, examines the promises and failures of universal architectural systems through Wachsmann’s work, situating them within broader debates on standardization, mobility, and global modernism. Her scholarship has appeared in the Journal of Architectural Education, Footprint, and Western Humanities Review, as well as in edited volumes published by Routledge and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.

İşbilen’s teaching spans architectural design studios and seminars in history and theory, where she integrates critical research, drawing, and speculative design as tools for architectural inquiry. Her pedagogy emphasizes architecture as a discursive and material practice, engaging sustainability, environmental justice, and historical consciousness as active design problems. Her research and teaching have been supported by fellowships and grants from the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, the AIA Northern Virginia Chapter, and Virginia Tech’s College of Architecture and Urban Studies. She has presented her work internationally across Europe, North America, and Turkey. She is a registered architect in Turkey and a member of the Chamber of Architects (UIA).