The urban transformation process accelerated immensely by the end of the 20th century is one of the problems Turkey has faced. This process, which is guided by various legal and administrative sanctions for many years, affects historical urban areas negatively. One of these sanctions providing a basis for inappropriate interventions on the historical urban areas is the Law No. 5366 on “Conservation by Renovation and Use by Revitalization of the Deteriorated Historical and Cultural Immovable Property”. This law, the “Renewal Law” in short, carried into effect in 2005, causes irreversible damages and losses through the renewal of the qualified urban sites. The purpose of this study is to critically evaluate the urban transformation of the “Land Walls Protection Area”, one of four sites determined as world heritages in the Historical Peninsula of Istanbul, through a reading of the Law No. 5366. This evaluation is made through “Zeytinburnu Culture Valley Project”, which is the largest renewal project identified among the six renewal zones falls within the Land Walls Protection Area. The paper begins with the history of Zeytinburnu through a chronological narration. After emphasizing the values of the district, “Zeytinburnu Culture Valley Project” is introduced in terms of its purpose, scope and content. The study then focuses on the spatial effects of Law No. 5366 through the final state of the project. Lastly, on its 13th year of force, the consequences of the Renewal Law on the cultural heritage that needs to be protected are specified in the light of the internationally valid charters from a conservation point of view.

As we move away from well-defined problem domains, and get closer to more open-ended domains like planning and design, an increase in the complexity of the problems compel the problem-solving behavior to change in a qualitative sense. Consequently, dynamic problem solving strategies appear as one of the requirements for computational design studies. This paper presents a novel multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) called the Interleaved EA (IEA) as a problem-solving tool, which incorporates dynamic aspects. It is specific to IEA that one of the objectives leads the evolution until its fitness progression stagnates. As such, IEA enables the use of different settings and operators for each of its objectives, which would be the same for all objectives in a regular EA. This enables the IEA to dynamically adapt its problem setting throughout its progression. We present the specificities of the IEA with an application on a design problem. As the IEA has been developed to assist in design problems, it is examined through the “Architectural Layout Design” problem studied through library buildings, exemplifying an ill-defined, multi-modal, and multi-objective problem. We compare the functioning of the algorithm with regard to, first, a regular rank-based version, for demonstrating the effect of the leading objective approach; secondly, with a popular multi-objective EA (i.e., NSGA2). We discuss how and why IEA can be used and developed further to incorporate domain specific understanding for multi-modal and dynamic design problems.

The non-place (non-lieu) concept came to the fore for the first time, with the book “Non-Lieux, Introduction à une Anthropologie de la Surmodernité”, written by Mark Augé in 1992. The book was later translated into many languages. The concept of non-place has been discussed and used in an extensive discipline of knowledge from anthropology to architecture. Non- place is a subject or part of a subject of a large number of academic studies. In this context, the concept has been translated to Turkish into two different forms as “yer-olmayan” and “yok-yer”. In this article I will question the translation, meaning, referents and context of the concept of “non-lieu”. Beyond that, I will discuss and criticize the logical, ontological, and epistemological problems of conceptualization has fallen into as it has been revealed by Augé. In this frame, I tried to put forward the differences and similarities between the concept of non-place and the concept of deterritorialization. I also will try to explain in which situations the concept of deterritorialization can be preferred.

Memluk Period Hammam buildings are existed in a very small number in Turkey and subjected to not only rapid deterioration but also disappearing throughout the Middle East. The aim of this study is to contribute to Memluk Period Hammam studies with an original finding of a case-study research. According to the scope of this study, Beyseri Hammam in Antakya which is ruled by Memluks under 248 years and currently located in south-west end of Mediterranean region of Turkey near Syrian Border is selected and analyzed under the structural-spatial and functional parameters. Beyseri hammam is one of the important example of Memluk Period Hammams in Turkey. Therefore, this study is revealed original findings on Memluk Period Hammam studies by making an investigation on not only limited to the case study but also on a comparative study related to the same period Hammams in Antakya.

Residential building projects, which are one of the main study areas of architecture, have the largest share in the building sector. Demand of housing should be met in a most efficient way especially in our country where housing demand is huge. It is important to designate reasonable design alternatives at the early stages of design process, and this can only make it happen when the decisions are made in a rational way at the design stage. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the architectural design of the buildings having the same geometry according to Turkish standards and regulations on the building cost. For this purpose, six housing projects with rectangular shape in plane having various dimensions were designed. These projects produced with tunnel form technology had shear walls as a carrier system and they were examined for 9 different storey numbers. Static analyses of the building models were made with Sta4Cad. It is shown that as the difference between the two dimensions of the horizontal plane increases, the cost of the building also increases in condition that the usage spaces are kept constant. With the increase in height, a U-shape curve, which decreases first to a certain floor and then increases again, is obtained. It is also proved that the projects produced with tunnel form technology are not rational in terms of cost beyond a certain building height. In conclusion, by putting forward the effects of the controlled-variation of the plane dimensions and building heights on the cost of a single building, useful approaches for the designers working for regional planning or urban transformation projects are obtained.

A material teacher in the documentation and in the past: Professor Baban and About "Materials Lessons" about half a century ago...

The Khans Area, located in Bursa - the first capital of the Ottoman Empire - has reached today, preserving its historical urban character with its changing and developing trade life, and was inscribed as a cultural heritage site by UNESCO in 2014. Bursa and Cumalıkızık Management Plan, which was prepared with a participatory method, presented many problems and expectations about cultural heritage sites, and suggested action plans for their solutions. One of the most important problems emphasized in the Management Plan was the weakening of the original identity of heritage sites due to the lack of urban design principles and standarts in heritage sites, and the development of urban design guides for the management sites was proposed as a solution. The scientific research project entitled “An Urban Design Guide Model for Bursa City Center” in Bursa Uludag University took this aim into consideration; however, it became clear that describing the process of preparing an urban design guide for cultural heritage sites should precede the process of producing an urban design guide peculiar to the area. In this article, a user-oriented urban design guide model for cultural heritage sites as a planning/design tool in the conservation and development of cultural heritage sites is discussed. The model is developed with the help of systematic approaches of urban design process and community engagement methods in academic literature in terms of a case study including analyses, user surveys, tradesmen interviews and an urban design workshop conducted in the Bursa Khans Area. This model, which considers interdisciplinary and inter-institutional perspectives and local participation, is expected to assist relevant institutions and professionals in the development of urban design guidelines for cultural heritage sites.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are within important pollutant groups which cause indoor air pollution and many serious health problems. VOCs include hundreds of different pollutants with similar properties and can easily volatilize at low temperatures. In order to avoid problems, negativities caused by VOCs in the building and its environments and the effects on human health must be determined. In this study, an examination and relations model, produced for this purpose in the field of building biology, is used. The process of this model includes the determination of a negative feature in building: building products with VOCs, a negative condition: VOCs in indoor air, a hazardous effect: being exposed to VOCs and many health problems. The research has shown that many different building products may contain VOCs. The indoor environment conditions are effective on emission properties. It has been understood that indoor air concentrations of these pollutants are mostly much higher than outdoor concentrations in many studies. For the exposure of users, not only the type of pollutants but also the properties of exposure are effective. In order to avoid negative effects or to reduce the concentrations, it is advised not to prefer VOCs containing building products, to control their usage conditions and to supply accurate ventilation in buildings. Recommendations are provided for future researches.

Istanbul hosted many royal guests such as emperor, empress, prince and princess during the reign of Abdulaziz Han when the relationship between Ottoman State and European countries took yet another turn. These visits brought a chance to endorse the strength of Ottoman rule and image over Europe. The Ottoman Empire attempted to leave a powerful impression over the royal guests through the newly implemented hosting protocols like its powerful contemporaries and visits to the key architectures reflecting the power and the deep roots of the empire. It’s been understood from the documents at the time that there were some modifications in the way of hosting protocols before and after Abdulaziz’s visit to Europe. The first considerable change is the addition of Naum theatre to the protocol after Sultan’s numerous opera halls and theatre visits in Europe. The second change is the selection of the location for Friday Ceremony observation, which was shifted from Tophane Kiosk where Prince visited in his first trip to Dolmabahçe Palace, which has contemporary technology and decoration. On the other hand, large military buildings and the kiosks built according to the modern architectural trends were kept and they were visible in the protocol during both visits. In this paper, we investigate British Prince Edward’s visits to Istanbul in the light of the related news in Ottoman and British press, the diaries written by Prince Edward himself as well as William Howard Russel and Ottoman archives. It has been attempted to present how Ottoman State wanted to see and show itself amongst the leading countries shaping architectural trends of its era in the second half of the 19th century through the architectural structures chosen in this visits in this study.

Different forces within the urban and regional dynamics made significant either localization economies or urbanization economies in different circumstances. Several researchers highlighted that diversity and specialization are not exact opposites; a region can be both diversified and specialized. Diversified cities might include several specialized clusters, as diversity might be having a healthy mix of sectoral employment. Studies mainly look at the relationship between the sectorial specialization/diversification and employment growth and productivity. From all that, the concept of diversified specialization has recently occurred related to the outcome of relationships between the sectors and against the economic shocks. Furthermore, decision makers generally prefer a diverse specialization rather than just one or a few. The aim of this paper is to explore the specialization, diversification due to the manufacturing activities and furthermore diversified-specialization pattern of the 26 NUTS 2 regions of Turkey between 2009 and 2014. How the regions specialize and indicate diversification of related industries, and if they point out different patterns regarding technology levels of the industries are the main research questions. Moreover, the performance of regions is explored by dynamic shift-share analysis whether there is a relationship between the specialization/diversification pattern of regions and their advantages.

With the introduction of the concept of ‘cultural heritage for society’, cultural heritage addressed in the context of human rights, and human rights have been involved in the relevant theory and practice of cultural heritage. The present study aims to identify the characteristics that a cultural heritage system on a universal, national or local scale should have in order to be human rights-based and to form an evaluation model. The study suggests that a rights-based understanding of cultural heritage will be more successful in practice. It is argued as a basic view that the main objective is to protect the rights, and a society and horizontal organization-based system, where power and responsibility are shared with all stakeholders, would allow for the effective protection of cultural heritage and for the achievement of human rights. In this context, three inter-related issues are discussed in the article. The study begins with the examination of human rights and the stage in which the idea of human rights reaches today is revealed. Secondly, the changes in the understanding of cultural heritage and the reflections of different aspects of this change of heritage are explained. Following the examination of the place of cultural heritage theory and practice in human rights, finally the characteristics of the cultural heritage system based on human rights are presented as a synthesis.

Urban planning education can be expressed as an interdisciplinary science field that integrates socio-economic contexts, theory and practice in the context of spatial analyzers (Keleş, 1987). With this view studios are defined the education process in urban planning; basic conceptual-theoretical issues such as urban-urbanization and urban models, practical issues such as reconstruction and reconstruction, and questioning with visual studies. From this point of view, it can be said that studios constitute the main frame of planning education in the context of the combination of theoretical knowledge and practical experience. This study is based on the hypothesis that urban planning aims to convey the experience gained in the studio process and that the system approach is the scientific research technique used at the basis of studio studies. The aim of this study is to discuss within system approach the methodology and evaluation process in the scope of context-content construct of the planning studies research conducted in Muğla (Menteşe) settlement sample research area. The focal point of these discussions should be seen as the present of planning approaches-models for the identification of spatial and functional identities searches based on the basis of the scenario script foreseen by the impressions obtained with the theoretical information, on-site and observation studies and on the foreseen scenario design. In the context of strategic spatial planning approach of this study, it is thought that defining the spatial-functional identities of the urban settlements in the upper scale and determining the strategic priority planning areas by taking the scenario design and the urban vision as a foreground and the subscale is going to present a different perspective to the urban planning education with the method design based on unit design.

Inspiration sources play important roles in design process as triggers for idea generation and tools for designers in constructing design problem. In this study understanding how the relationship between design problem and inspiration source is being formed is aimed. The process of Environmental Design Studio V in Karadeniz Technical University, Landscape Architecture Department was examined with a focus on early design phases in which conceptual approaches were determined by using inspiration sources. Design problem solving process was integrated into design studio process and the conceptual approaches determined depending on this process and their inspiration sources were examined. By using different inspiration sources and conceptual approaches, how same project site was resulted in different design products was represented. Concept posters, reports and visuals of application projects submitted by students at the end of the term were used as study materials. By using content analysis method and with a qualitative approach, design concepts and their inspiration sources adopted by students were determined, what kind of variations these concepts created in design solutions-strategies was examined. It was revealed that inspiration sources are directly related to analyses conducted at beginning phases of design; students benefit from ecological, social, cultural and/or physical situations/features, and these sources can be bring forth through functions of building/s located at site, cultural or physical features of the site. Also it was determined that different conceptual approaches to same site directed students to quite varied design scenarios; the activity patterns and space types included in scenarios were also varied in parallel to these differences, by this way authenticity of designs was achieved.

In this study, concept of the culture is tried to get a perceptible defininition in landscape workspace associating with change. The pace of the rapid changes fort he technological dependency level of the developing countries creates spaces which are similar. As a result of this, the harmony between imaginary and real spaces in the minds of the people is lost and the perceptibility is reduced, which causes alienation to the space. A studt model within the framework of the current approach is proposed by making use of such concepts as alienation, socialization, belonging and trust, positive and negative spaces. The search model that is developed in the end of the study, it was conclude that the change reduced the bond between the humans and the spaces and that the gaps in the espatial continuity produced negative spaces. It was observed that the humans become alienated to the space and to each other accordingly in the case of failurein providing a pysical continuity. It was also observed that this situationals reduced the sense of belonging and harmony of the individuals.