ADIYAMAN'DAN BİR KERPİÇ EV

This is a study of a local example of traditional architecture from Adıyaman, a city that will soon be under the threat of social and economic change and in need of conservation measures when the Karakaya and Karababa dams over the Euphrates are finished. The sun-dried mud-brick house which has been chosen for this study has an interesting location. It is on top of a hill called Kaletepe in the central district of the city. It is built over the point where two streets meet and closed street sections are formed under the building. The main living level of the house is on the second floor. On the ground floor there are service elements like a barn, a storage place for hay, a w.c, a well located in the courtyard and a sundurma used for washing laundry, boiling grains, etc.. The second floor is reached by a stone staircase from the courtyard on the north of the house. The rooms on the second floor all open to a place called hayat (örtme) one side of which is open to the courtyard on the north. The dooms around the three sides of the örtme contain no furniture except one which is used as the kitchen. The mud-brick walls of the rooms are designed to serve as cubboards and niches for beddings. Poplar beams which determine the. dimensions of the rooms have been used as floor and roof spanning elements. Timber sheeting and pressed earth covers the roof beams. In the construction of load bearing mud-brick walls, no horizantal timber beams have been used in between the mud-bricks. So the thickness of the walls are not less than 50 cm.. Thus, the spatial arrangement and the kind of construction materials used reflect the traditional features of the local architecture of Adıyaman.