Ahmed Kemaleddin (; 187013 July 1927), widely known as Mimar Kemaleddin (Architect Kemaleddin) was a renowned Turkish architect during the late Ottoman and early Republican eras. He was among the pioneers of the first national architectural movement, a type of Ottoman Revivalism. His lifetime saw intense and important changes for Turkish history and culture.

Early years
Ahmed Kemaleddin was born 1870 in a middle-class family to Ali Bey, a naval captain, and his wife Sadberk Hanım at Acıbadem neighborhood of Kadıköy district in Istanbul. In 1875, he began with his primary education at "İbrahim Ağa İbtidai Mektebi". He continued his secondary education in 1881 on Crete (then part of the Ottoman Empire) due to his father's assignment. Returned soon after to Istanbul, he finished the high school.

In 1887 at the age of 17, he entered the School of Civil Engineering (, today's Istanbul Technical University). Ahmet Kemalettin graduated as an engineer with honours in 1891. He then remained at his alma mater and worked as an assistant for four years. During this time, he created his own works in his office he had opened outside the university.

In 1895, promoted by his scholar German architect August Jachmund, designer of the Sirkeci Railway Terminal in Istanbul, and supported by a state scholarship, he went to Germany, where he was educated two years in architecture at the Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg in Berlin. Afterwards, he worked two-and-half years in various architecture offices gaining professional experience.

In 1900, Ahmed Kemaleddin returned home and resumed work at the university. Following the departure of August Jachmund, he assumed his post as lecturer. In 1908, he played a pioneering role in the formation of the first vocational organization for engineers and architects in the Ottoman Empire, the "Society of Ottoman Architects and Engineers".

Designing and building 
Whilst still a student at the Hendese-i Mulkıye (State School of Engineering) where he commenced his studies in 1887 he received the Medal for Industry. He must have been hardworking and creative. These personal attributes may have been related to his greater interest in the lessons of Prof. Jasmund on architecture than in engineering and to the fact that Prof. Jasmund chose him as his assistant.

Kemaleddin showed himself to be a designer open to learning and experimentation and is also a portrayal of a self-reliant architect.

However great an influence Jasmund and the German connections are on his perception of design, the wide scope of his references is also important. The Art Nouveau of Ratip Pasha Mansion, a building of the early era, or the connection of Harikzedegan Apartments with French public housing, the Orientalist flavour in the design of the Evkaf-ı Humayun Nezareti (Ministry of Imperial Foundations), the eclectic style of the 3rd Foundation Han or the Empire line of the Husnu Pasha Tomb cannot be ignored.

A Kemaleddin work doubtless presents an image overflowing with ideological connections. Only here his creativity also feeds his ideology. The transformation of his ideology into a school of architecture is essentially down to his creative talent and self-confidence, if also fed by his industriousness and organisational expertise or teaching skill/teaching discipline. 
His life was already over when he ascertained the eventuality of this confidence being shaken.
His architecture was a tale that prevented the hero from experiencing a tragic end, from an untimely death.

Restorer with principles
On 27 Rebi-ül ahir 1327/18 May 1909, he was appointed head of architecture at the Imperial Ministry of Foundations. 
The possibility of designing and bringing to fruition new building projects is an irresistible passion for an architect, but running maintenance and restoration works on historical buildings, the basic and traditional function of the Ministry, was also a very special learning opportunity. Kemalettin took the intelligent approach of evaluating the two fields together and allowing each to foster the other. Restoration was an opportunity for productivity in which he drew on and applied information that was the source for the experimentation that differentiates architectural language.

Whilst perceiving restoration as a method of interpreting traditional architecture and making the linguistic infrastructure for its renewal, he attempted to manage and give direction to a field whose principles were as yet not clearly defined.

He knew that restoration was not an ordinary repairs job. He taught it.

He pioneered in the field by restoring a great number of Ottoman monumental structures employing for the first time a scientific approach.

He restored the Yeni Cami Hunkar Gathering Place with passionate enthusiasm. But his principal performance was certainly the Mescid-i Aksa and Harem-i Serif project. The skill he demonstrated in the restoration of the Mescid-i Aksa won him international acclaim and an award from the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Teaching and organizing
On graduation from the Hendese-i Mülkiye he was appointed to the teaching staff of Technology and Architecture at the same school and as Prof. Jasmund's assistant. On his return from Germany where he went to gain knowledge and experience he took up his post at the Hendese-i Mulkiye again. And from that point on he continued to teach. He educated hundreds of students at Sanayi-i Nefise Mekteb-i Alisi (the Academy of Fine Arts), Konduktor Mekteb-i Alisi (the Conductor School) and Muhendis Mekteb-i Alis (the Academy of Engineering).

They were the years when the school of civil engineering was founded and developed as part of the Muhendishane-i Berri-i Humayun (the Military School of Engineering). At the stage when the curriculum of the school was being developed Kemalettin Bey was running a large number of different courses. It was an open field ranging from Technology and Architecture to Pen and Ink and Shadow Drawing and from Calligraphy to Iron Works. But what is certain is that he transmitted his enthusiasm to the students.

When he was appointed to the Evkaf Nezareti, he took his students to the Building and Reparation Technological Assembly to meet the anticipated demand for intensive and fast production. This permanent staff composed of the talented architects and engineers he had chosen was to turn into a school and its office was to become a production centre, as it were, of the design concept given the name of national architecture.

But that was not all.

It was Kemalettin Bey who pioneered the founding of the Ottoman Society of Architects and Engineers, and who personally penned the call to the meetings of the Foundation through the Tanin newspaper.

His final role was membership, and subsequently the presidency, of the Council of Fine Arts founded by the Ministry of Education in 1926.

Thinking and writing
The writing of Turkish architecture and the history of architecture is a field that opened up late and has not yet accumulated enough strength. Even today it does not appear to have reached the necessary level. 
Kemalettin Bey is an unrivalled pioneer on this subject. 
His thoughts on living and professional models are also incomparable. On the one hand there is his identity as an architect and professional experience in that he designed many buildings, most of which he built; on the other hand there is the duty that is obligatory for the teaching profession of transferring information and experience within specific systematics; a writing function arising from the synergy of this dichotomy and a realisation of the need for questioning, evaluation and historical contextualisation. 
When research and thought of the genetic codes of a work and profession are perceived as a mission, the first or earliest written account of our history of architecture has begun. Of course the content and the approach can be debated. But not his pioneering.

1870-1891
The availability of information and documentation of the first years of Kemaleddin's life is very limited. All that is known is that he started at the Ibrahim Aga primary school near his home in 1875 and that he learned French and Arabic at the special school, to which his father was appointed, opened for children of army officers in Crete in 1881.

When he returned to İstanbul he continued his education at the Numune-i Terakki school, which provided a model education. He graduated from this school, where the most well known teachers of the era gave lessons such as the mathematician Mehmed Nadir or the astronomer Huseyin Efendi. In 1887, he was accepted into the second class of the Hendese-i Mulkiye. He was awarded the Medal for Industry while he was still a student and graduated in 1891.

1891-1909
Structural engineering and architecture are taught together at the historical Muhendishane (Hendese-i Mulkiye) in Halıcıoğlu, which Kemalettin starts attending in the second class. Kemalettin shows more interest in Prof. Jasmund's architecture classes than in engineering classes. Nevertheless, his training as an engineer makes itself felt in all his designs.

1909-1919
On 18 May 1909, he was appointed head of architecture at the Imperial Ministry of Foundations (or, the General Directorate of Foundations, as it is now known). The years of this period of office, 1909-1919, were the most productive era for Kemalettin Be