RURAL ARCHITECTURE AND SUSTAINABILITY: LEARNING FROM THE PAST

Abstract

Traditional rural living environments have the potential to be instructive in numerous ways. Rural settlements, which are often created with a minimum of effort and have been around for thousands of years, can be a template for living environments of tomorrow. Starting off with that proposition, this paper goes on to emphasize the importance of examining the characteristics of traditional rural settlements in the context of sustainability. The article aims to analyze and thus improve our understanding of rural settlements, and in the process of doing so, it produces and reproduces knowledge within the field of sustainability. A model consisting of multiple layers was applied through the sampling of a particular rural-traditional settlement (Taraklı), thereby shedding light on the relationship between the settlement and the parameters of environmental sustainability. In that model, three main methods of learning from traditional architecture were proposed: (1) Learning From Vernacular Architecture (LF-VA) through existing settlements; (2) Learning From Experience (LF-E) through those who have learned from vernacular approaches; and, (3) Learning from Research (LF-R). Through the use of that model, the data obtained constitutes a holistic pool of information. The basic facts articulated in this pool are models, concepts and theories, and the prominent concepts include documentation, conservation, adaptation and innovation. As a result of the analysis based on the model, the relationship of the physical characteristics of the rural-traditional settlement exemplified in the article with the environmental sustainability parameters has been illustrated systematically. In the literature, the products of rural architecture generally exist with identification and documentation studies. In this article, the relationship between rural architecture and sustainability is discussed in the context of learning from the past and it is shown through an existing settlement.