Abstract:

Human beings directly reflect their attitudes, habits, self-expressions, and their way of perceiving life to their houses. For vernacular housing, as well, one of the major factors that influence spatial configuration is culture. The impact of user-specific lifestyles reveals itself through the formation of housing. Different spatial organizations and housing schemes depend on cultural differences. In this context, determining the factors that help shape vernacular housing that can be used as paradigms for new designs is essential in terms of physical, social and cultural sustainability. One of the first steps in designing a house is to determine where its spaces fall on the spatial hierarchy scale from “public” to “private”. Spatial hierarchy, which is a crucial criterion for comprehending the interrelation between spaces, also provides understanding of cultural identity. In this paper, the impact of cultural difference on spatial configuration is emphasized and vernacular housing in three different cultures (Laz, Hemşin and Gürcü) in close proximity to the Eastern Black Sea region are evaluated using the criteria of spatial hierarchy. The criteria that help us rank the spaces from public to private are as follows; 1. In order to obtain the accessibility coefficient, the properties of the space; that is, its position within the system, its density, and its frequency of use are taken into consideration. 2. In order to obtain the psycho-social coefficient, the roles of the space; that is, its privacy, security, identity, and time are taken into consideration. With the help of these two coefficients, the “spatial hierarchy coefficient”, which enables the ranking of spaces from public to private, is obtained.  Within the scope of the research, thirty houses were studied. The spaces designated as “kitchen, sitting room, entrance, and guest room”, which were common in all three cultures were ranked according to their spatial hierarchy coefficients. The results were evaluated in terms of user relationships with their cultures. In this research, space syntax, observation, and face-to-face interview methods were used to reach the findings. In this study, conducted on the spaces formed and inhabited by people of three different cultures located in the same region, it was determined that the cultures produced both similarities and differences in the spatial configuration of their houses. 

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