Climatic considerations in traditional built environments: The efect of natural ventilation on thermal comfort in Alac¸atı, I·zmir, Turkey

Abstract

The traditional settlements in Turkey are under a growing danger of either destruction and despair or tourism. The urban tissue of historical settlement areas is attractive for touristic activities and vacation programs, but in many of these settlements the tissue is mostly ruined. The main reason of this deformation is the lately defined conservation regulations. The buildings of the old settlements are ruined or fixed with unhealthy methods and the infill or new settlement areas cannot integrate morphologically with the old heritage. The conservation of the buildings in the historical settlements is expensive, so especially in historical settlements close to tourist attraction centers such as şirince and Alaçatı in the Aegean Region, the construction of new buildings to answer the need for new residential building stock increases. The problem in the design of these new dwellings constructed in the empty parcels within the settlement or in the boarders of the settlement is that they do not follow the design principles of the traditional settlements and when they seem to follow the design principles they do that only at the level of image. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the physical conditions of the old traditional settlement examples, and to compare these data to find out new design criteria for the design of climatically responsive new buildings in these specific areas. To invent a method to evaluate the air pressure change between the open, semiopen, and closed spaces of traditional Turkish houses will be the main goal of this study. The point where this study outstands from the other similar studies is the observation of different housing typology, which needs to be studied with the airflow factor under temperate-hot climate conditions. The houses of Anatolian settlements are mainly not mid-courtyard houses and the semi-open spaces are the most important part of these houses, so the observation of natural ventilation behavior is different from other studies working with different climate areas. Alaçatı, Izmir, TURKEY is chosen as the case study area for this study, because it is one of the fastest growing urban sites in the Aegean Region of Anatolia.