From Visual Culture to Visual Dictionary: Rethinking Seeing in Architecture

Abstract

In architectural education, seeing is commonly framed as a technical competence grounded in precision and representation. Such an approach presumes that spatial meaning pre-exists depiction and that vision operates as a neutral medium. Drawing on visual culture theory, this study challenges that assumption by repositioning seeing as culturally constructed, institutionally regulated, and spatially mediated. The paper examines a semester-long Visual Culture course offered in the Department of Architecture at Abdullah Gul University. Centred on the Abdullah Gul Museum, the course treated the museum not merely as an object of documentation but as an apparatus that structures visibility. Through iterative cycles of reading, discussion, observation, and visual production, students engaged the museum across urban, architectural, and material scales. The primary outcome-the Visual Dictionary-emerged as an open, relational system integrating text, image, and material strategies. Rather than producing finalized design objects, students articulated how meaning is constructed through framing, sequencing, embodied interaction, and display. The study argues that this pedagogical model shifts architectural education from representation-centred practice toward the critical production of situated regimes of seeing.