Sedad Hakkı Eldem (1908–1988) was a Turkish architect known for seeking a national modern architecture, adapting the International Style to Turkish domestic traditions instead of applying it uniformly. Born in Istanbul, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and opened his own office in 1932 while teaching at the Academy until 1978. In 1934 he founded its National Architecture Seminar to record traditional Turkish houses; this work led to his books on the Turkish house, among them the five-volume Türk Evi (1984). With Emin Onat he designed the Istanbul Palace of Justice.
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For the Hilton Istanbul (1955), designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, he worked with Gordon Bunshaft, adding Ottoman and Turkish elements to Bunshaft's modern lines; it is the longest-operating Hilton outside the United States. The Social Security Complex, Zeyrek (1970), designed from 1962, shows the horizontal roof lines, wide canopies and cantilevers of his late work, and won him the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1986. The Atatürk Library in Taksim (1976), a three-storey concrete building of hexagonal units, was planned as part of a cultural complex of which only the library was built.
