A Study on the Sustainable Architectural Characteristics of Traditional Anatolian Houses and Current Building Design Precepts

Abstract

Buildings and construction industry play an important role at local and global scale in utilization of natural sources, energy consumption and environmental problems. In this respect, the discipline of architecture has a prominent responsibility in achieving sustainability by constructing environmentally-friendly buildings. In this study, traditional houses selected from different climate regions of Turkey, which is located in the middle of Asia and Europe, were examined in terms of settlement characteristics, planning scheme, form, facade characteristics and material use, attempting to determine whether there are precepts for architecture. Common sustainable architectural characteristics of traditional Anatolian houses were listed drawing attention to the fact that the obtained data should be considered as a precept in current building design. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.