Ercan Ağırbaş will be the ninth speaker in the conference series to held a speech on his projects of mosque and synagogue designed in 2010.  “Contemporary Religious Architecture in the Mediterranean World.” The event is co-organized by the Dominican Studies Institute-Istanbul (Dost-I) and Assoc  Prof.  Dr. Erhan Berat Fındıklı, project manager from the Department of Sociology at Istanbul Medeniyet University. It also receives support from Depo Pergamon, Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Istanbul, and the Network of Centers for Christian-Muslim Relations (NCCMR).

Ağırbaş who is currently working as a professor in the dept. of architecture at the German Technological University in Oman and also practicing architect in Studio Hat in Istanbul, designed a mosque and synagogue adjacent to an historic evangelical church which was built in 1774 in Gelsenkirchen in Germany aiming at spatialization of the dialogical relations among the world monotheistic religions, heritage and contemporary architecture in an urban context within the frame work of European capitals of culture that ware shared among Istanbul, Essen and Pech in 2010. As a part of the project these mosque and synagogue were thought to be brought and rebuilt in Istanbul but due to the unexplained bureaucracthical obstacles this idea had remained unrealized. Ağırbaş in his designed where he used the recyclable materials tries to redefine the fluidity of place and ephemerality of site specific design.