Abstract:

Space, when considered regarding the way it is used, represents a style of a residential experience, which, from the local to the universal shared by human beings and communities. While on the one hand, social habits, which are the essence of civilization, overcome all the borders and make people together, on the other hand, they constitute a complex cultural system of relations faced within those spaces. Buildings such as shops, "arasta", "bedesten", mosque, "hamam" and "han," which were the major units of the Ottoman towns and whose borders have become more indefinite in the contemporary cities while being identical with the market (bazaar), constitute the basis of this system of cultural relations. Coffee Houses, one of the most important characteristics of this physical environment, are the spaces that from the Ottomans to the present day transferred socio-cultural relations to the public area, and primarily to the " neighborhood" scale that shaped the social topography of the same places. Coffee Houses, symbolizing different poles of public life that is controlled very firmly by any form of political and religious authority, appear most of the time as the place where social life is reshaped. While mediating for the reproduction of the social order, they assume the role of a productive center of a multi-faceted communication web in the daily life of the communities, as the places that consume and are consumed at the same time. In this paper, the spatial construction of the Coffee Houses from past to present will be analyzed, and the process of change in the beyond-modern discussions will be scrutinized.

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