The relation between room organization and spaciousness

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Sofa as the Expression of Elegance in Traditional Kayseri Houses

The town of Kayseri is in the geometric center of Anatolia and on the ancient trade routes connecting the west with the Middle East and Asia. Although its history may be traced back to earlier periods, during the first millennium BC, Kayseri was named as Mazaca. Later, after the establishment of the Roman province in 17 AD, it was called Caesare and with the later Arabic rule, Kaysariye. Byzantines constructed the present citadel and outer city walls. Later on, during the Seljuk period, Kayseri became one of the most important centers in Anatolia with many religious and secular public buildings. The flourishing city spread beyond the citadel and a number of town quarters were established around the city walls. In the late 16th century, under the Ottoman rule with a population of 40,000, Kayseri was the largest city of Anatolia after Bursa, four-fifths of its population being Muslim and the remaining, Christian. Evliya Celebi visited Kayseri around 1650 and described it as a lively urban setting comparable to Bursa and Edirne (Evliya Celebi Seyahatnamesi, 1970, 68). The town had a major earthquake in 1835 destroying many of its buildings and killing more than 660 people (Ainsworth, 1842; Ahmet Nazif, 1987). The economic boom after the Second World War gradually forced Kayseri to turn into a so-called "modern" town with medium-height, densely built apartment buildings at the expense of destroying the historical quarters. In the last fifty years, drastic changes have taken place and a rich corpus of traditional urban houses has disappeared. Today one can still see a very small proportion of traditional neighborhoods and the last examples of houses mostly in quite poor condition.Publisher's Versio

“Kayseri'de Yaşam ve Konut Kültürü” kitabı üzerine

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Living Environments of the Turkish Elderly: Suggestions for Alternative Environments

Although the annual rate of population growth is decreasing in Turkey, the rate of aging population growth is increasing. This article presents an overview of the current living environments of Turkish elderly and provides some suggestions for improving their physical environments. Because of the strong family ties among Turkish family members, a kind of psychologically extended family living seems to continue and parents prefer to live next door to their children. Still, the position of the elderly seems somewhat ambivalent today, especially in urban areas: although many youngsters generally feel obliged or seem to be eager to look after their aged parents, it is becoming quite difficult to do so for many reasons; e.g. in general, family sizes are diminishing, numbers of working women are increasing; flats or houses are getting smaller and the problem of the generation gap seems more likely to create friction between the elderly and the young. Hence, although institutional living for the elderly is seen as an undesirable solution and as a last resort in the Turkish culture, such types of living are slowly being accepted in the society, especially in urban centers. Research carried in small towns, cities and metropolitan areas in Turkey indicates that although the elderly's assessment of their physical living conditions do not differ as a function of urbanization, their satisfaction with life seems to decline from small towns to metropolises. The reasons for this decline in life satisfaction can be sought in the changes in the social living environments of the elderly accompanying urbanization which involve reductions in size of social networks and frequency of social interactions. Another problem is related to gender: Turkish women, compared to their male counterparts as well as Swedish men and women seem to be negatively affected by aging

Eleşti̇ri̇ye yanıt hakkının kullanılmasının bi̇li̇msel koşulları üzeri̇ne

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Assessing the spaciousness of interiors

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