A decision-making model through flexible design in airports architecture: Dalaman airport

The aviation industry operates in a rapidly changing environment and grows day by day. Changes and developments in the aviation industry cause unpredictable changes in airports. In an unpredictable future, it is essential to give airports the independence to change and adapt, and to include sensible decisions in the design process from the very beginning so that airports can transform with minimum effort when needed. The biggest challenge that airports face in the planning and design phase is uncertainty. Traditional airport design and planning which based on a single long-term forecast, struggles to cope with future uncertainties and fails to deliver efficiencies to meet the changing needs of an airport environment. In order to overcome the uncertainty problems that arise at airports and to meet the demands of uncertain environments, it is necessary to develop new flexible policies that can meet uncertainties at the very beginning of the planning and design stages. In the thesis study, "How can the concept of flexibility be included in the airport planning process?" and "How can flexibility in the terminal building layout plan?" questions were prioritized. The thesis focuses on flexibility in the physical planning part where architects are responsible of airport planning, which requires a multidisciplinary study, and a new framework for flexible design philosophy has been developed for the subject of obtaining various flexible spatial layouts in terminal buildings.