Abstract:

Housing architecture of Van developed in The Old City of Van until the beginning of XXth century. Houses had been built with adobe material, as one-storey or two-storey attached buildings with flat soil roofs. Detached houses in groups supervened to newly built houses in today’s City of Van after the year of 1900 having been rendered possible by available land width. Traditional houses were abandoned and ruined one by one since 1970s because of changes on social lifestyle and the people’s emulation for concrete buildings. In the absence of a City Conservation Development Plan, lack of observation and registration have accelerated this ruining process. In terms of architectural features, our case study Selahattin Selçuk House took place in scope of those plans that are two-storey, with inner halls, two facades, more than two rooms, without pavilion. The house which was evaluated as had been built between the end of the XIXth century and the first quarter of XXth century, was occupied until the year of 2011. Western wall of the house’s upper floor was destroyed entirely in 2011 earthquake and some critical structural problems were arised in inner sections. A registration record has not been found about Selahattin Selçuk House that had been built as unique barrel roof sampled one among Van houses. The house had been destroyed entirely by its owners in 2015 and a multistorey commercial building have been built over. Selahattin Selçuk House was quite different than architecture of today’s flat soil roofed traditional Van housing which have been built in the City of Van since the beginning of XXth century. This difference appeared both outer and inner architectural parts of the building. As a conclusion, it is evaluated that documents about physically unpreserved houses among Van Civic architectural constructions should be transferred to next generations for contributing scientific studies of architects and art historians.

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