Living together in the Iberian Peninsula since 8th century the Islamic, Christian and Jewish groups were contributed to the birth of Mudéjar architecture in the 11th century. This style, which was appealed to the big three religion, was generously applied following the re-conquest movements of the Christian Kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula when they tried to get rid of their Muslim enemies. Mudéjar architecture is one of the problematical topics of the architectural history writing mechanism. The studies that define Mudéjar origins and character were mostly conducted by the Spanish scholars. While a group of the scholars explain that Mudéjar origins have Islamic roots, another emphasizes its Christian aspects. Notably, recent researches have altered former classifications concentrating on geographical facts in addition to cultural varieties. This study investigates the sources of the Mudéjar architecture and takes attentions to the origin, identity and historiographical problems which are common to the architectural history studies. An evaluation of Mudéjar writing history particularly that of survey books will help us to identify the obscurities associated with Mudéjar concept and clarify the conceptual and terminological tools in histories related to it.

Finials, observed in Anatolia since 7000 B.C., have been used in various religions and societies in different forms and symbolic meanings, and have been applied by Turks with great success above the tents and building tops and on spearheads. In Ottoman period, they were also used above the dome, vault, minaret and minber tops of many architectural building types such as mosque, madrasa, tomb and fountain. Either in historic buildings, the finials have never been studied or the existing researches concentrated on the metal finials. Research on stone finials is rather limited. This study aims at defining general characteristics, typological documentation, and inventory of stone finials in religious architectural buildings located in city centers of Macedonia, as an architectural element rather than focusing on their symbolic meanings. Hence, it is intended that the data obtained from the research on existing stone finials of case study nine mosques and two tombs built in 15th-18th century in Macedonia, have been a comparative study for the similar building types in similar regions during their restorations. First, definition of finial, its historiography, and functions have been explained in detail, and material, technique, and formal features, size, dimension, and ratios of finials have been studied. Stone finials in case study mosques and tombs of Macedonia have been assessed according to their forms, type of building they have been located, according to their location inside the building and their material by means of historic photos, engravings and in-situ observations.

The purpose of a conservation act is to secure cultural heritage so that the associated cultural values can be passed on to future generations. Hence, conservation that is defined as “keeping alive” in a manner to include yesterday, today, and tomorrow is regarded as a cultural act. Therefore, one of the major justifications for conservation is to ensure the integrity of the values of monumental building in relation to the authenticity, documental, historic, architectural, usage, and continuity values. In order to actively carry out conservation, the monumental building, considered to be cultural heritage entities, should be assigned a function and opened for public service, which would ensure human-building integration. However, the most important point to bear in mind is to achieve the correct balance between conservation and functional modification in such a way that the structure will not lose its authenticity. Within the framework of conservation criteria, it is quite important to determine the success in the preservation of the authenticity, as well as the satisfaction of the new users. The performance level of monumental building, which can also be defined as “cultural perception performance,” will aid in measuring the manner in which different characteristics--authenticity, symbolic, historic, and cultural values of a building are perceived by the users. Within the scope of this study, the Buruciye Madrasah, a single-story Anatolian Seljuk period building with open courtyard plan located in the Central Anatolian Region within the boundaries of the city of Sivas, was examined. The building used today as Handicraft Market and Tea Garden. The cultural perception performance of this cultural heritage building was assessed in order to evaluate whether the authenticity values of the building were accurately perceived by the users, within the limits of the physical environment that the building is located in.

Being an approach for raising habitability of physical environments, reuse of buildings can be materialized in historic buildings as well as the buildings that has been witnessing near past. The present study focuses on the coffee houses that have been transformed from apartments in Zafer and Alaeddin regions in Konya, Turkey. Five such transformations were categorized in terms of spatial organization, and user satisfactions were measured for each category. In the questionnaire, responded by 244 participants, the spatial organization variables, the layout type (with long hall and without long hall) and the layout style (room concept and holistic concept) were used as independent variables whereas the dependent variables were frequency of use, preference of choosing a table, length of occupancy, general satisfaction and spatial perception of users. According to findings, the transformations that used room concept (with long hall and without long hall) satisfied participants more than that of holistic ones. Therefore, possible to claim that, users respond positively and originality of apartments are preserved highly in the interventions that transform apartments in minimum amount and redesign each room with different ambiance. The study is also important for its proposal of a user satisfaction measurement approach for similar transformations.

Urban open spaces that have public characteristic via coexisting of citizens, communication and generating own social spaces, have been lost its value because of globalization and arise of new life styles. People-environment relation had ignored and disconnected, inert, problematic spaces had arised in these public spaces especially surrounding by gated communities that have developed since the late 1990. The aim of this study is to draw attention to some problems around gated communities and public spaces in the context of people-environment relations, and examines the theorical findings with the help of case study in Mavişehir-İzmir via systematic observation research. The study concluded that, the sustainability of open public spaces that take place around gated communities are under threat and this problem stem from the physical and social segregation. Thus, problematic spaces arise which are unsafety and disenable to interaction. When we examine two case site that built in different periods and have different characteristics in Mavişehir, it was observed that, park and recreation areas around 1. Stage Mavişehir site that does not have borders, using actively and have qualified design-landscape areas when we compared to Albayrak site. Design of open public spaces and landscape equipment are very limited in parks and recreation areas around Albayrak site. These places cause discarded, unsafe areas. The survey results reveal that gated communities undermine the relationship between human and environment, cause significant handicaps in terms of public life and sustainability of open public spaces.

This article present partial findings of research project titled “Enhancing Logistics Sector As a Tool in Order to Improve the Competitiveness of Large Scale Manufacturing Industry in Kayseri”, supported by Yıldız Technical University Scientific Research Project Coordination Department.
This research is based on large industrial firms in Kayseri of which had achieved to be ranked in top 1000 industrial enterprises in 2014, the list of Istanbul Chamber of Industry. The purposes of the research are; to present the basic structural characteristic of the large scale manufacturing industry, planted in Kayseri and to state the factors which increase logistic cost of manufacturing industry firms. Opinions of firms have been set via face-to face survey and in-depth oral interviews. Collected data evaluated by qualitative research methods.
These are the findings; regarding with the basic structural indicators, firms logistics performance and problems regarding with logistics activities of the firms respectively. According to first group of findings, the distribution of sectoral form and firm size does not indicate to a concentration sub-sectors of manufacturing industry. It is evident that "being close to railway" used to be quite important while today highways dominate the location selection. Second findings group comprise that except two, all of the firms prefer to work with logistics providers. Nevertheless, field research shows that "logistics providing" in Kayseri means "only transporting". The third group of findings refer that high transportation costs of highways inside Turkey adversely affect input and manufacturing costs that entrepreneurs do not prefer to reach far markets due to high logistics costs. This is such an important problem that it is pointed as one of the most prominent issue to reach to new, far foreign markets.

The aim of this study is to examine whether there is a difference between the residents’ tourism support on the development of tourism in the regions where tourism has developed however the regions’ social, cultural, physical and political conditions are similar in some ways and also to state if there is a difference then find out the reason behind it – which feature of the citizens caused such diffrence. With in this purpose first of all, Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was applied in order to discover the factors identifying Bosphorus Region residents’ attıtude towards tourism development, the objective and subjective variables considered and also to determine the relation between the variables the PCA was applied. Second, to define the rating of each factor supporting tourism in terms of PCA, Weighted Linear Combination Method was held. Research data was gathered via a survey applied to 476 people accomodating in Bosphorus Region in May and March in 2014. Considering the results of this researh it’ s found out that the attitudes of the citizens of Bosphorus Region to torism region resıdents’ contribution of towards tourism development differed according to the perceived impact of tourism, effects of tourism on socio-cultural, physical and political environment and also the locational distribution of scors with in Bosphorus region is given. Finally, findings of this research are discussed with support of related literature.

This study aims at gaining insight on productivity processes while designing in physical model making and digital modeling media. Empirical data on design processes have been gathered from think-aloud protocol studies of a single designer solving a small architectural design problem via physical and digital media. A quantitative assessment of parameters of design productivity is introduced and applied to protocols of the two processes. Preliminary analysis shows that there are differences between both media.

Design education being the heart of the studio idea can be regarded as a common discourse, but on the other hand, it is possible to regard “criticism” as the heart of the studio. Lots of variables like the necessities of design process timeline, structure of the student group, developmental properties of different class level and variables like components in the design subject, effect the interaction and formation of criticism style between the student designer, studio instructor and other student designers. In design education, because of these reasons, there are different criticism styles like self-criticism, one to one criticism, desk criticism, peer criticism, panel criticism and closed jury criticism which has different advantages, disadvantages and outcomes. In this study, criticism phenomenon in design studio will be evaluated with classification over actors, atmosphere and channels.

After the industrial revolution, the developments in the field of science and technology have changed the ways of production and consumption which created compulsory competition between institutions. In this case, the products and services are uniformed and a new process which is hard for the consumers to differentiate the quality and efficiency has occured.

Even the companies which have advanced technological capability, efficient and effective quality standarts, need an integrated corporate identity o be perceived as having a strong and reliable image. This image is important because the human perception gathers the visual data and puts it in the process, than an image about the company evacuates in their minds.

To build the strong reliable and long lasting image, the design process has to follow an integrated visual strategy. Architectural design can be effective in different stages of strategic design with its multidimentional character rather than the other visual elements. Since architectural design elements meet the strategic design approaches, it is inevitable unique, memorable and inspiring designs whilst creating the whole visual identity.

This article states that one of the most effective ways to compete in the global conditions is to create unique image for the companies formed by strong corporate identities. It also emphasizes the importance of architectural design strategy in the holistic corporate identity strategy.

This study looks into the factors that are influential on the preferences for shopping center location selection and explains these factors through a conceptual model. By means of a comprehensive literature search, the theoretical framework of the factors affecting the causes of preference is established and relevant research questions are chosen. Thus, the theoretical foundations of the model have been created. The field research includes the companies that operate in Istanbul but making shopping center investments all over Turkey. In this study, among the qualitative research methods, in-depth interview technique and interview form approach are preferred. Interviews have been held with people from project development departments of the companies investing on shopping centers pursuing different characteristics. The survey was made in 23 different shopping center developer companies and 108 questionnaires in total have been given by using face-to-face interview technique. The results of the study have been evaluated by applying Analytical Hierarchy Process method. AHP can be defined as the decision-making and estimating method, which gives the percentage distribution of decision points in terms of factors affecting decisions; it is used in the identification of decision hierarchy. As a result of this study, accessibility, socio-economic factors, competitive environment and future developments which are required a good market analysis have been listed in the first row as the importance degrees. This study aims at becoming a source for shopping centre investors, developers, architects and other related disciplines; additionally, expects all these sides to act with the knowledge of what is expected from them.

Developed as a port city during the Ottoman modernization process, Mersin revealed distinctive characteristics, which differentiates it from the traditional Ottoman city, in terms of urban tissue and cultural diversity. Following this process, many institutional and cultural uses began to take place in urban form with the Republican modernization.

Mersin became an alluring city within its close vicinity due to its emerging international commercial relations and business opportunities. Consequently, a new urban life came into existence in the city, different form that existed in other Anatolian cities. It triggered emergence of different land use units in urban form, which was evident especially with erection of buildings of cultural and educational use during the Republican period. People’s House emerged as a cultural building while many schools was built during the Republican modernization.

This study investigates urban development of Mersin during Ottoman and Republican modernization periods, depending on a significant educational building through explorations into the erection of the first high school of the city, Tevfik Sırrı Gür Lisesi, named after the governor of the period, through its relations to urban space. In this framework, urban development of Mersin is studied in relation to its education history and construction of Tevfik Sırrı Gür Lisesi after a discussion on education policy of the Republican period. And this process is discussed in relation to Republican modernization.