HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS OF THE TURKISH EXTERIOR SOFA HOUSE WITH TWO ROOMS IN ANATOLIA.

The renowned Turkish architect Sedat Hakkı Eldem, who has carried out the most comprehensive study of the Traditional Turkish House, writes in his work entitled, Türk Evi Plan Tipleri (Turkish House Plan Types) (1955), that the element of the "sofa" is the main archetype of the layout of the Turkish House and creates a typology based on the "sofa." In Eldem's typology, 4 main types of plan are introduced: houses with no sofa, with an exterior sofa, an interior sofa and a central sofa. The exterior sofa plan type of the Turkish house layout scheme in Eldem's typology constitutes the most widely applied plan among the various layouts of the Turkish House. This plan in its most simple form is used in country, town and city, and consists of a room or a series of rooms with an open sofa situated in front. In this type of plan, two to six (and sometimes more) rooms are situated side by side in back of the wooden columns. The most widely used form however consists of two rooms. An open sofa, usually with wooden columns with its top covered, stands In front of the adjacent and usually same-sized two rooms, looking out over the street, gardens or courtyard. In this paper, the rural examples in Anatolia of the "Turkish Exterior Sofa House with Two Rooms" will first be introduced, followed by an attempt to provide a look into the similarities between these houses and their antecedents in the layers of Anatolian history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]