Customized housing designs for contemporary users in Turkey from the perspective of architecture students

Abstract

House is a building that provides people with life and helps them keep secure and continue their primary activities (Eruzun, 1980; Hasol, 2002). In other words, the house is the shelter of a family that is the smallest unit of society. It is the place where people maintain their existence in the natural and social environment. Since ancient times, people built houses to maintain their lives in various names, such as caves, tents, huts, and apartments. These housing types reflect the era's technical, cultural, and social specialties (Arcan & Evci, 1999). The modernization process in architecture that started in the first half of the 20th century also showed its effects in Turkey. The modern houses were designed in Turkey according to the spatial needs of a medium family with children. They took the place of the traditional Turkish houses (Aksu Kocatürk, 2021; Burkut, 2014). However, after the 2000s, the dynamics of the changing contemporary lifestyle have brought about different housing user types than the conventional family with children of the modern era in Turkey (Ekenyazıcı Güney & Tulum, 2021; Koca, 2015). As the spatial needs of these new user types differ from the conventional families, they require different housing designs (Davis, 1997; Demirkan, 2007; Stevenson & Rijal, 2010). The present study focuses on these new housing designs for Turkey's new emerging contemporary occupants. According to that, the students were asked to design housing for a predefined specific type of contemporary occupant in the Building Information Course in the Department of Architecture of Suleyman Demirel University. The students were expected to acquire knowledge by transferring theoretical knowledge into practice.