Abstract:

Recently, many municipalities of historic cities in Turkey are working to preserve and revitalize their downtowns as they are significant touristic magnets. The city of Izmir also provides many attractions for both the citizens and the locals within its historical city center. Documenting the historical buildings in these areas is a prerequisite for taking the preservation decisions. In this study, we focus on the historic street façades in the city center prior to conservation decisions of street rehabilitation projects and we selected Necatibey Boulevard in Izmir in Turkey, which is situated in the urban retail core of the city, as the case study. We are all aware of the fact that façade intervention decisions taken independent from the building itself are inappropriate. In addition, ICOMOS underlines the importance of evaluating the historic buildings not only with their own style, scale and ornamentation, but also within their environmental context. It also emphasizes the importance of historical research in the conservation planning of a historic city. In other words, deciphering the timeline of a historical area has a priority in taking conservation decisions. In this frame, we proposed a methodological way of producing rectified image mosaic of a historic streetscape for visual analysis and deciphering its timeline in the context of close range digital photogrammetry. Amount of control points, light conditions of the photographs, planes at different depths, curvilinear surfaces and hidden areas are the critical points to be considered while producing rectified image mosaic of a historic streetscape with conservation aim. After the production of the rectified image mosaic, one should use mapping technique for visual analysis as rectified image mosaic is a sufficient underlay for it. Then, he/she should produce the historical timeline of the streetscape within the light of archive and historical research. The result descriptions give way for the better perception of architectural details, colors, textures and changes in time to the architectural restorers. Moreover, the production of digital image mosaics of the historic street façades are also important inputs for street rehabilitation projects, research studies on urban history and virtual environments in the context of cultural tourism

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