Contemporary Mardin settlement evolving from vernacular

xABSTRACTMardin is a unique city, because of its urban pattern and architecture which formedthroughout centuries and protected till now. Today, stone houses which are the majorcomponents of vernacular architecture are disfunctioning with the living conditions of the era.Concrete additions are built or spacial arrangements are changed ruining the originality of thestone houses. Concrete apartment blocks which don?t suit with the architecture of the old cityseem appealing, because they can provide comfortable living conditions. The need foraccomodation reveals itself with the increasing number of slums and concrete apartmentsspreading and surrounding the old city. The city is expanding ignoring the traditional pattern.This theses aims to develop a design method proposal for generating contemporary housetipologies and settlement alternatives for Mardin which are suitable with the historical pattern.The first part, discusses definition of architectural language and how to develop a newarchitectural design in a vernacular context by using informal shape grammer method. Then,the design method using informal shape grammars and its application areas are explained.Examples of its usage in vernacular context are given. Producing new types and styles fromexisting ones is one of the fields that designing with shape grammars is interested in. Themethod used by informal shape grammars is taken for producing new alternatives incontemporary house design in Mardin.In the second part, city of Mardin is explained. The factors determining the design of thehouses and the specific arcitectural components of them are described. The corpus of 20Mardin Houses analyzed in Prof. Fusun Alioglu Ph.D study are choosen for extracting thegrammar of Mardin houses. Rules expressed with shape relations provide a basis for thedesign of a contemporary Mardin house.The last part is a proposal of what can be done with gramamar rules extracted from theselected 20 Mardin houses. It?s proposed to transform the disfunctioning spaces and spaceswhich changed function into contemporary functional places in the new house designs. It?snot aimed to have a completed product in the end. The steps that are to be followed indeveloping the design method and alternatives are investigated. It is possible to producecountless design alternatives and methods with the determined rules and constraints, fordifferent conditions varying with changing needs. Also, there are proposals for relations ofhouses with each other and the commercial areas.The application of informal shape grammars is used for generating new house types fromexisting ones. In order to apply this design methodology for a real project, cultural and socialaspects of Mardin society should be considered and a program should be formed according tothese inputs.Keywords: architectural design within a vernacular architectural context, architecturallanguage, house tipologies, Mardin, rule-based design, shape grammars