This paper presents two case studies conducted in Architectural Design education in order to meet understanding and ability criteria in MIAK (Turkish Architectural Accrediting Board) and NAAB (National Architectural Accrediting Board) for ‘sustainability’. The main purpose of this clause is to reinforce students’ ability to design projects that optimize, conserve or reuse natural and built resources; their ability to provide healthy environments for occupants/users, and reduce the environmental impacts of building construction and operations on future generations through such means as carbon-neutral design, bioclimatic design, and energy efficiency. First-year undergraduate architecture students provided the setting for Case Study 1. A comparative study was implemented in a basic design studio between two distinct groups (a test group and a control group) mandated specifically with awareness raising. At semester’s end, both groups’ projects were reviewed and evaluated via questionnaire. Third-year undergraduate architecture students provided the setting for Case Study 2. An experimental study was carried out within the context of green design education, with the purpose of reinforcing understanding and ability of sustainability issues. The overall aim was to integrate building energy performance assessment into the design studio as a design decision support tool. As in Case Study 1, there were two groups. Students in the control group followed the conventional design process, while those in the test group tested the environmental performance of their proposals with computational models and energy simulations carried out with Ecotect v5.20. The conclusion reached was that a conventional design process is inadequate for a multidisciplinary knowledge-based studio aiming to integrate the theoretical basis of the energy-ecology field with architectural studio practice.

The research presented here questions the possibility of drawing an outline of the structure of modern architectural knowledge, and how the concepts of ‘discontinuity’ and ‘opposition’ could be utilized in attaining an epistemological reading of such an outline. A contextual analysis of texts and visual material provides compatible data on how oppositions could form the basis of a late modern architectural episteme. The method of the research includes classification of these texts and visual content and an interpretive study of the classified visual material to determine the major oppositions in modern architectural discourse. Along with this nonreactive contextual research method, a close-ended survey was conducted among a sample of architectural students to evaluate the epistemological value of these oppositions. Findings of this research showed that, in part, the oppositions (being a derivative of the notion of discontinuity) were what made modern architectural knowledge impartible (teachable), legible (readable) and permeable (absorbable, expressible).

The environment is in an ever-changing state as a result of humankind’s ongoing relationship with nature. Recent developments in industry and technology are resulting in a diminishment of the benefits of environmental change for all forms of life, and the lack of awareness in the construction sector of the necessity for sustainable approaches is leading to an ever more rapid depletion of natural resources. A combination of these factors has now led to damage of the natural balance and triggered the global warming that is threatening our world. One response to this in recent years has been the development of numerous building and material assessment models that aim to evaluate the environmental impact of buildings and materials. While each model evaluates building materials using different methods, all share one characteristic, in that they mainly deal only with the environmental effect of building materials. Hence, while research into the economic, social and cultural factors involved in building material choices is of equal importance, study numbers are very limited in this area. This article aimed to make a survey the deficiencies of current models, and evaluate architects’ sensitivity in choosing materials. In this context, a survey study was conducted to compare and evaluate the criteria architects use when selecting materials.

Creating brand awareness is the first and most important stage of marketing communication. Many types of marketing communication tools have been used to do this in business processes. Digital marketing tools are actually a deconstruction of traditional marketing tools and have become more important by providing interactivity to both consumers and producers in the marketing process. These tools incorporate consumers into the marketing process as an active, rather than passive, player. For housing companies, systematic and strategic use of digital marketing tools is an important resource in gaining competitive advantage, yet there is limited research on this topic in the literature. In this context, this study made use of the Delphi Method to investigate the impact of digital marketing tools on brand awareness generation among housing companies. Normative inferences were made through interviews with panel participants working in large-scale housing companies, and a theoretical framework was drawn up for usage trends among digital marketing tools. The Delphi results indicated that, in housing companies, marketing tools that create “paid digital content” (corporate web site, search engine pages, e-mail communication, etc.) currently have a greater impact than those which create “proactive content” (social media, etc.). However, another significant finding on which there was consensus among the panel participants is that in the creation of brand awareness, digital marketing tools such as Facebook or Twitter which create the latter content will become more important in the future.

The attributes of shadows produced in architectural spaces is one criterion of lighting design. A shadow has two different attributes; harshness-softness and lightness-darkness. The project entitled “An approach for definition and evaluation of shadow characteristics as a design criterion occured under artificial lighting (2011-03-01-DOP01)” was implemented at Yıldız Technical University to develop an approach for determining and quantifying the characteristics of shadow. For this purpose, the two attributes of cast shadows were treated separately. This study presents the procedures and results of the project regarding the definition and grading of the harshness-softness attribute of shadows.

A look at contemporary studies on architectural discourse reveals their focus on two topics: inter-disciplinary aspects of architecture and the crisis of representation. It is a characteristic of architectural design to use knowledge from other science and disciplines and this creates fertile ground for new expansions. Inter-art studies, with their new experiments in which they borrow creative and representational tools from other disciplines, may be seen as a way to overcome this crisis. The concept of ekphrasis—a genre of ancient rhetoric—became an area of interest in the second half of the last century, and has been studied by academicians and artists ever since; first in its own field of literature, and then in the area of other representational arts such as photography, cinema, etc. The basic definition of the concept, ‘a verbal representation of a visual representation’, has expanded in meaning and ekphrasis has become an inter-medium which provides the transposition of meaning between different areas of representation. As studies were done on this concept, the direction of ekphrasis also came up for discussion, which in turn became a discussion on reverse-ekphrasis ‘a visual representation of a verbal representation’. The outcome of all these debates points to ekphrasis as a potential tool between architecture and literature. By considering it as a medium which achieves the transposition of meaning, and thereby displays the spatial potentials of literature, it will provide a new perspective for architectural representation. The thesis of the article will be supported by two case studies to be discussed in the article: Danteum and Masumiyet Müzesi (The Museum of Innocence).

Developing since the early 1920s, the discipline of room acoustics has made important strides in correlating subjective and objective, or measurable, values for music rooms. By means of much research done throughout this period, internationally accepted objective and subjective parameters and optimum values for these have been determined for rooms in which distinct forms of music, such as Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Operatic are produced. This information, in combination with experience gained in existing halls of music, has allowed for the establishment of a set of design principles for architectural acoustics. On the other hand, little, if any, research has been done that would lead to the creation of such parameters for Turkish Melodic Music, a form of music entirely different from Western Music in terms of both structure and the rooms in which it is produced. The purpose of the interdisciplinary research project entitled “An evaluation of the parameters for room acoustics in rooms used for Turkish melodic music” was twofold: to research the effectiveness of existing room acoustics parameters for this music, and to propose specific values for a set of objective parameters to be used in the architectural design of such rooms. The project firstly researched and determined the rooms used for Turkish melodic music in Istanbul, the type of music produced in them, and the rhythms, instruments, player numbers etc. involved. The architectural and acoustic characteristics of the rooms were studied and the results evaluated with experienced musicians. Finally, a proposal was made for parameters for acoustics and their optimum values for the rooms. This article aimed to briefly explain the studies implemented based on the methodology of the research and to present the findings.

In the developed world, one outcome of the second industrial revolution and its transformations in the use of natural resources, cheap labour, social and economic standards of living, and modes of commodity transfer, was the relocation of larger heavy industries to the periphery of cities. What remained in many of these cities as a result of this forced movement was what we might call industrial heritage, large sites made up of vast buildings, warehouses, offices and harbour docks which had outlived their original function. By the last quarter of the 20th century, these structures were being taken in hand and redeveloped for new use as housing. Originating as they did in industry, the majority of these buildings had several structural features in common: open floor plans, high ceilings, large windows and strictly functional interiors and exteriors. The first examples of such places being taken over for residential purposes was in the Soho district of Manhattan in New York. Often informally initiated by artists or as alternative solutions to the problem of homelessness, the transformation here began with low-budget individual enterprises. These constituted only a marginal element of the housing industry and were the first generation of what came to be called loft conversions. By the close of the century, however, this generation had given way to the second, in which loft conversions became a popular phenomenon of urban architectural culture in cities all over the developed world. By this time, the conversions were architect-designed projects being marketed to high-income white-collar urbanites in search of a distinctive style of living. As a unique example of such a second-generation project undertaken in Turkey, the Levent Loft Project on Büyükdere Boulevard in Istanbul is worthy of study both in terms of its own historical development and residential profile, and the general culture of loft living, development of its typology, and urban housing rituals.

The post-1815 years of the Industrial Revolution witnessed the growth of international free trade, prompted by the opening up of new markets, accumulation of capital, and the bountiful supply of cheap raw materials made available by colonization. In entities such as the Ottoman Empire, whose regimes maintained strict state control and thus restricted a liberal economy, the process of participation in international trade occurred in an entirely different manner. Primarily, this article aimed to compare and evaluate the economic, social and political changes in the Ottoman and European worlds during this period by examining how these changes were reflected in the architectural representations and displays of symbolic wares during the World Expositions of the nineteenth century. The literature review revealed orientalism as a perspective much used by researchers in attempting to draw cultural comparisons for this century, dominated as it was by colonization. However, when the scope of orientalism was broadened to include entities such as the Ottoman Empire—which remained beyond the sphere of Western imperialism—we see that architectural and art products representing or inspired by the Ottomans also came to be examined from this perspective. Taking this issue as its starting point, the study sets itself apart from those which limit themselves to pure orientalism. Instead, it brings together those elements representing of the Ottoman state at the World Expositions, and aims to analyze them in their economic, cultural and esthetic entirety. The first of these expositions was the London Exposition in 1851, and the study examines this and the subsequent six. Of these, four were held in Paris (1867, 1878, 1889 and 1900), one in Vienna (1873) and one in Chicago (1893). The research does not include expositions taking place after the turn of the century, since, by that time, they were becoming akin to specialized trade fairs. Also included in a separate section of the study is the 1863 Istanbul Exposition (Sergi-i Umumi-i Osmani’ye). While not having the same international weight as the World Expositions, this was included in the study to illustrate how it reflected change, being the first such exposition in Ottoman lands to have pavilions for foreign exhibits. Research shows that the elements chosen to represent the Ottoman state at the expositions were not from the classical period, but rather from both the earlier and later periods, and the article considers these choices to have been based on a desire by the Ottomans to be seen as part of Europe in an era dominated by colonization.

Suburbs may be defined as regions located on the periphery, or outside the center of any urban settlement. Their growth is best described as a mysterious phenomenon, which in recent years has been viewed as the most suitable alternative for the construction of a residential environment to cater for ever-expanding populations in major cities, away from crowds and density, and pollution of various types. In a developing country like India, where urbanization has overtaken maintenance of a rural livelihood, metropolitan cities face the question of accommodation in all its aspects. Bengaluru, the one-time paradise of pensioners, is now the IT capital of India. It is engaged in efforts to relocate its growing population through the creation of better roads, communication and housing, and of course through decentralizing the same to its peripheries. Nandagudi is one of five locations near the city where urban planners wish to relocate the excess population of the city with the help of planned housing, roads, industries and easy commuting facilities. It is northeast of Bengaluru, and also happens to be an agriculturally rich area, known especially for its milk producing and bee keeping activities. Hence, the area poses the eternal question of sustainability versus development. This article aimed to examine the issues involved here from the perspective of both the locations involved: on the one hand is the city of Bengaluru, faced with the urgent need to relocate its growing population, while, on the other is the group of villages that make up the demarcated area of Nandagudi, and the inhabitants of these villages, who remain entirely unaware of the urban expansion activities that will take place at the cost of their traditional livelihoods.

Since their first settlement historical cities have been changing due to both natural and social conditions. These changes also have reflections on cities’ physical structures where they could be entirely traced. There are plenty conserved, changed and lost physical components in the old Ottoman capital Istanbul in time. It is known that several spatial elements, such as the residential buildings, public buildings, were either collapsed or lost. Mesires are also within these lost elements which represent information on Istanbul’s recreation culture and green areas in the Ottoman Era. Thus, the aim of this study is to evaluate the change of mesire areas and recreation culture of Ottoman culture. Ottoman period, changes in Mesires are exemplified relating to some significant milestones and classified. In methodological terms, changes in Mesires are read within a semiological perspective considering denotative and connotative changes. Consequently, it is emphasized that Mesire culture and areas, which are inherited from Ottomans to today’s Istanbul society, have changed and/or lost.

This paper aims to evaluate the problems of traditional housing which have continued original function and to develop solution recommendations. Within Safranbolu Eski Çarşı District, 826 registered structures have been classified according to their type of utilization. The current condition of these structures along with their various treatments, land surveys and official registration documents have been analyzed. Thus, the structures used as housing have been compared and evaluated against the current condition of other structures in terms of their modification/authenticity and their project situations.