Abstract:

Village rooms are structures that allow village people to gather together and spend time, as well as to accommodate guests coming from outside the village, in addition to being places where celebration, weddings and funerals are held. The village rooms, which come across as a reflection of the hospitality in our culture to architecture, attract attention with their aesthetic, social and cultural values as well as their functional requirements. These rooms, which were built by the rich people of the village or local people together, were used as the common property of the village. But the village rooms have largely lost their functions due to the fact that they have not kept up with today’s requirements. In this study, it is aimed to evaluate the significance of structure in Turkish Folk Art by introducing the architectural and decoration features of the village room that we identified during the surface survey carried out with the permission of the Ministry of Culture in 2014. The room in Söğütcük Village, connected to the center of Sivas, one of the villages where Ilbeyli Turkmens settled, is an important example of village rooms that have largely preserved their original identity. İlbeyli territory attracts attention as one of the special regions of Sivas province in terms of village rooms. The room was built in 1883 according to the inscription on one of the columns that carries the ceiling. The structure, built in the technique of masonry with rubble and coarse-grained stone on a slightly sloping terrain, is built on a rectangular area close to the square and is of the “nimsekili” plan type. In this plan type, which is widely used in village rooms, the rooms are divided into three parts with different heights with rows of uprights placed in the east-west and north-south directions, connected by Bursa arch and beams sitting on them. The room in Söğütcük Village attracts attention in terms of its decoration rather than its architectural structure and it is one of the most important examples in the region in terms of murals processed on plaster. Söğütcük Village Room, like many other village rooms in the region, has a dense decoration inside, but it is quite simple from the outside. In addition to compositions such as herbal decorations in wall paintings, flowers coming out of vases, symbolic items and architectural structure depictions, motifs such as gas lamp, warship and wall clock are important in terms of reflecting the period style. In addition to the pencil-like decorations, there is a wooden decoration on the balustrades and columns, and a plaster decoration on the fireplace and south wall mihrab. Although the Söğütcük Village Room has been repaired and protected, it is in a dysfunctional state. Therefore, in addition to protecting the material assets of the village rooms, it is important to revive and maintain the culture in the room.