Learning from Vernacular Turkish House: Designing Mass-Customized Houses in Mardin

Vernacular architecture in housing has different examples within Turkey and “Turkish house” is a widely used and discussed term. Local, climatic and historical conditions including local materials shaped the formation of houses as well as the philosophical and cultural aspects. These houses are mostly built by local users and they have evolved in time. There are many lessons that can be learned from these houses where recent mass houses and apartment blocks are built numerously usually ignoring the environmental and cultural values and needs. Advances in technologies support and encourage mass-customization and mass-production can be freed from unconnected and repetitive housing. For this study Mardin is selected and detailed and new housing design researches and concepts are presented. In short, this paper aims to draw a general frame for Turkish Houses and focuses on Mardin Houses in order to emphasize that new housing can be designed by using new technologies which are inspired and derived from traditional local values and settlements.