Environmental representation: Bridging the drawings and historiography of Mediterranean vernacular architecture

Architectural drawings, which are projections of spaces on a paper surface, can be categorized according to the projections’ directional and temporal relation with the represented space. A projection becomes a documentation when it departs from an existing spatial organization for recording it on paper. The projection serves the design process when it departs from the present to foresee a spatial proposal in the future. While the former records the present within limited interpretive range, the latter is more constructive.  While these two types of projections are known widely, there is another highly interpretive type of projection, the potentials of which, are generally underestimated. As the architectural historian’s tool, this third projection type represents bygone architecture. The task of this drawing, which is one of the least questioned issues of architectural history, is to restore an incomplete image by referring to material and textual sources. This drawing type contributes to the methodology of architectural historiography while conceiving, explaining and representing space.For illustrating this situation, this study analyzes the vernacular settlements and their environmental integration because this selected context reveals the interpretive nature of the third type of projection in a successful way. In this framework, the cut-away axonometric is considered as an appropriate drawing method for uncovering the integrity between architecture and its site or culture and nature. The outcome of this theoretical insight into the prolific relations between drawing and architectural history is coined as “environmental representation.”In history architectural products have been integral components of the environment. Then, the architectural representation of historical buildings through drawings becomes critical since the majority of architectural drawings tend to isolate buildings from their environment. This conventional representation of historical architecture has been the dominant tool of typological analysis. Typology, which is intertwined with plan drawings, categorizes historical buildings according to their spatial, structural and material organizations and disengages the buildings from their socio-cultural and environmental context. If this methodological problem of typology is regarded as a problem of drawing, a new mode of “environmental representation” can be proposed.This study proposes “environmental representation” of architecture through cut-away axonometric. This graphic proposal is based upon the theoretical references of “environmental aesthetics”, which is an interdisciplinary field analyzing the participatory human engagement in environment. “Aesthetics,” as a term, defines this bodily engagement into environment through the use of all human senses. In this theoretical framework this study challenges the assumptions of scientific theory for architectural representation of the “abstracted object” and proposes an alternative method of “environmental representation” on the basis of “aesthetics”. Within this scope, the proposed cut-away axonometric drawings produced by the author is analyzed in order to represent exemplary historical contexts of architecture selected through the vernacular settlements of the Anatolian Mediterranean

A Critical Review Of The Roman Atrium House: Reading The Material Evidence On “Atrium”

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A reinterpretation of the suprematist painterly space for the comprehension of basic design in architectural educationMimarlık eğitiminde temel tasarımın kavranmasına yönelik olarak süprematist resim uzamının yeniden değerlendirilmesi

The basic design course is the heritage of the Bauhaus and similar avant-garde approaches, who established a practical education system and a theoretical framework comprehending art and design disciplines during the early 20th century. Today, basic design is still the most important course of the first year in the curriculum of many art and design programs in Turkey and abroad. This is also viable for architectural education. In the discipline of architecture, which is based on the definition of space, basic design has a special value for the comprehension of basic principles in the transition between two dimensional and three dimensional compositions. For the student facing the design process for the first time, it is difficult to understand the basic design principles. This study reinterprets the Suprematist painting compositions of the early 20th century Russian avant-garde through applicable examples and raises new proposals for basic design applications.   ÖzetTemel Tasarım dersi erken 20. Yüzyıl’da sanat ve tasarım disiplinlerini kapsayıcı uygulamalı bir eğitim modeli ve kuramsal çerçeve ortaya koymuş olan Bauhaus okulu ve benzer eğilimler taşıyan avant-garde ekollerin mirasıdır. Halen ülkemizde ve yurtdışında birçok sanat ve tasarım programında temel tasarım eğitimin ilk yılında en önemli ders olma özelliğini sürdürür. Bu durum mimarlık eğitimi için de geçerlidir. Mekân tanımı üzerine kurgulanan mimarlık disiplininde temel tasarım, kompozisyonda iki boyuttan üç boyuta geçişe ilişkin temel ilkelerin kavranması açısından özel bir değere sahiptir. Tasarım süreciyle ilk defa karşılaşan öğrencinin temel tasarım ilkelerini kavraması ise zor bir süreçtir. Bu çalışma söz konusu süreci sistemleştirmek için erken 20. Yüzyıl Rus Avant-garde akımlarından seçilen Süprematist resim kompozisyonlarının katkılarını gerekçeli olarak ve uygulamalı örnekler üzerinden değerlendirmekte ve temel tasarım uygulamaları için yeni öneriler ortaya koymaktadır

Süprematist resim uzamında mimari form üretimi : El Lissitzky'nin prounları

This thesis re-conceptualizes Lazar Markovich (El) Lissitzky's (1890-1941) PROUN drawings as architectural representations. The study reframes the PROUNs within the intellectual climate of the Russian Avant-garde, circa 1920 when the compatibility of the two-dimensional form generative approach with industrial production was contested. The mentioned reframing is intended to serve as a tool for the principal argument of this thesis: the PROUNs as architectural representations, indicate an alternative and inspiring constructivist strategy. This condition might suggest an intellectual process for architectural design along with the contributions of individual skill and craftsmanship which were surpassed by the mainstream Constructivism.M.Arch. - Master of Architectur

Akdeniz dağlık yerleşimindeki kırsal mimari gelenekte çevre estetiği: Ürünlü örneği

This thesis formulates a conceptual framework to account for the rural architectural traditions. The proposal is presented by referring to Ürünlü, a Mediterranean highland settlement in Southwestern Turkey. The thesis' basic assumption is the environmental coherence of the traditional rural culture. Environmental aesthetics provides the conceptual basis through which architectural elements of the environmental coherence are investigated. Environmental aesthetics enhances the inclusive conceptions of "environment" as an integral whole merging nature with culture and "aesthetics" as an integrated realm of perceptual engagement with environment. The integrative perspectives of environmental aesthetics unify the phenomenological approach with the concepts of "tectonic syntax" and "pattern language," which have been raised by previous studies of the traditional built environment. This integral conceptual framework is used to derive the conceptual tools. Environmental coherence between the various scale levels of the rural settlement ranging from architectural detail to settlement pattern defines "aesthetics of continuity." The conceptual tools, which are the "tectonic joint," the organic interface and the environmental armature, serve as the successive scale levels on which the architectural elements of the "aesthetics of continuity" are analyzed. This framework is applied to Ürünlü for identifying the spatial articulations of environment as multileveled patterns illustrating culture-specific solutions to contextual problems. Hence, the patterns are reconsidered as the aspects of architectural enculturation. The thesis' proposal for an environmental representation of the settlement concretizes the patterns of integration between the rural architectural tradition and environment and explains the aesthetics of continuity between nature and culture. The intended contribution of the case study is a new theoretical approach generally applicable to the rural settlements.Ph.D. - Doctoral Progra

Patterns of environmental coherence in the rural architectural tradition of ürünlü (akseki-ibradı basın)

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Historical Continuities from Bronze Age to the Present: Local Architecture of the Akseki-İbradı Basin (Turkey)

The Akseki-İbradı basin (Antalya, Turkey) is situated in southwestern Anatolia at the transitional geographical band between the Mediterranean coast and inland Anatolia.The Taurus Mountain chain passes through the basin. In this mountainous topography architecture has become the means for survival. Local architecture reveals how the available material sources have guided the emergence of a characteristic construction technique. This is a specific combination of timber and rubble stone masonry.The traditional settlements of the region are fabricated through the reproduction of an essential structural principle underlying this construction technique. Almost all constructions ranging between the simple retaining walls to the masonry of the dwellings, share the basic joint between timber and stone. The structural system is composed of irregular units of rubbl e stone interlocked into each other without mortar. The system is reinforced, at every 50 cm. height, with a pair of timber runner-beams on the two faces of the wall. These runner-beams are connected to each other by tie-beams at horizontal intervals of 50 cm. As a result, rubble stone masonry is strengthened by inserting regular rows of runner-beams held in position by projecting cross-ties. Archaeological reports concerned with the middle bronze age (2500 - 2000 B.C.) constructions in Beycesultan (Denizli, Turkey) reveal the deep-rooted historical background of the above-mentioned construction system. Although archaeological sources indicate the continuity of this architectural tradition throughout history, this issue has not yet been investigated in detail. The objective of this paper is to explore the available archaeological information in order to unfold historical continuities between the construction system in the Akseki-İbradı basin and the documented structures of the Bronze Age Anatolia