Plan Restitution Trial on a Group of Traditional Erzurum Houses in İbrahim Paşa District

Abstract

The aim of this study is to purpose a restitution for the plan of a group of traditional Erzurum houses, which were built as independent but adjacent houses in the second half of the 18th century in the historical city center of Erzurum, by examining the spatial, structural and functional transformation with the abolition of borders while transforming into a café/restaurant. These traditional Erzurum houses are located at the intersection of Raşit Paşa and Salih Yüzbaşı Streets in İbrahim Paşa District, which is one of the historical settlements in the south west of Inner Castle. Houses once used independently began to be used as a single building with a number of changes made in the plan layout. However, during the change of function, facade layout and numerous spaces intertwined under the same roof and this made it difficult to understand the original plan scheme of the buildings. As there is a lack of documentation of the changes made and the presence of ambiguity in the different verbal information sources about the buildings, the main problem of this study is to determine the number of houses the cafe/restaurant consists of. Other important problems are the determination of the boundaries and the spatial organization of the houses. In addition, the scarcity of written sources in literature about these historic adjacent houses, which are numerous but more modest in the urban fabric compared with the two-story independent houses, increases the importance of this study. In order to reveal the changes and transformation of a group of traditional Erzurum houses built independently but adjacent to each other, first of all, traditional Erzurum houses were examined architecturally under the headings of location, plan and facade layout, material and construction technique properties. Then the architectural features and possible traces of change on this group of buildings, which were not mentioned in any source or document, were revealed in terms of location and plan features. After documentation of the current situation, property deeds, cadastral plans, satellite images, old photographs, historical and current maps, traces of the buildings themselves, information about traditional Erzurum houses and comparative studies were used to understand the different building phrases and restitution of the plan of these buildings. When the archive documents are evaluated, it is understood that the group of buildings were built in the second half of the 18th century according to Nene Saliha Hanım's Foundation record dated to 1791-92.