About

I am Omer Akin. I have been a registered practicing architect in the state of PA and in Turkey, since 1979 and 1968, respectively. I have been teaching at the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University since 1977. Since I opted to become emeritus in 2017, I have been active drawing, painting and writing – both fiction and non-fiction. To a degree my sculpture work relates to my most recent architectural installation: the Turkish Nationality Room at the Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh.

This room is designed with ancient woodworking techniques in mind; called Kundekari and Citakari that Turks have been using since their very early days in Central Asia. These techniques are based on creating larger wood panels out of very small wood pieces. Since there was (and still is) scarcity of native species of lumber in Central Asia and Turkish tribes were mostly nomadic in those days; they had to travel light and rely on structures made from small pieces of lumber. An entire page has been dedicated here to the Turkish Nationality Room --http://www.nationalityrooms.pitt.edu/content/turkish.

In addition, this website contains presentations of paintings, sculpture, fiction, technical manuscripts, sketches and other architectural projects that I have created and included here for you to enjoyment. Since I started sculpting only recently I have only two titles to show: Four Seasons, and Human Figures. I have been trying my hand at painting for longer; so, I have nine frames and one mural to share with you. Fiction is also very recent. I have three titles; Hermit Crab, a full length novel; Musings of a Male Menopausal Mutt, a collection of poetry; and Discovered in Retrospect, a collection of short stories; all available at Amazon under the pseudonym of Sail A’non.

I have been working at technical monographs/textbooks, as well as freehand sketching a lot longer than all of my other interests. There are six technical titles that Amazon still offers: Representation and Architecture; Psychology of Architectural Design; A Cartesian Approach to Design Rationality; several entries in the Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Generative CAD; and Embedded Commissioning of Building Systems. My sketches are from a dozen different countries and with a variety of subjects ranging from landscapes, buildings, human gatherings, animal species, wilderness, to water-born crafts. I organized them under the following titles, Mainland China, Czech Republic, Greece, Germany, Estonia, Japan, USA, and Turkey.

Each topic in this website is devoted its own webpage with commentary and captions. You are invited to write to me if you have questions, comments and requests. Enjoy this website and its contents!

Sincerely,

Omer Akin, Professor Emeritus, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh PA 15213, (Ph) 1 412 268 3594, oa04@ndrew.cmu.edu