The architects Ender Ergün and Eser Ergün, who realised the conceptual design for the Syriac Church of the Virgin Mary in Yeşilköy, will participate as speakers in the third of the lecture series on “Contemporary Religious Architecture in the Mediterranean World“, jointly organised by the Dominican Studies Institute-Istanbul (Dost-I) and the Sociology Department of Medeniyet University in Istanbul, with Assoc. Prof. Dr. Erhan Berat Fındıklı as project manager, and also with contributions from Depo Pergamon, Italian Cultural Institute-Istanbul, Instituto Cervantes de Estambul.

Architect Ender Ergün founded EM in 1995 and since then he is practicing his profession in the architectural scene in Turkey. Together with his son Eser Ergün he designed a conceptual project for the Syriac Church of Saint Marry in Yeşilköy/İstanbul in 2013 drawing inspiration from the architectural heritage of the same community in Mardin. This unrealized project represents one of the aspects of complex interplay and tension between historicism and contemporary architecture in Turkey.