Examining the spatial features of university education buildings in the context of the sustainability of academic culture

The concept of sustainability has become very important in today's world, which is rapidly changing and developing, and in this process, existing tangible and intangible resources are being destroyed unconsciously. Sustainability, which is treated with different approaches in many disciplines, has found its place in the field of architecture. Among the sustainability concepts addressed in the field of architecture, it is seen that cultural sustainability is included in this field as well as social, environmental and economic sustainability. The space syntax method, which allows the evaluation of space from a social and cultural perspective, has started to be associated with the concept of sustainability with the studies carried out in recent years. Applied at urban and building scales, the space syntax method examines the socio-cultural logic of the spaces used by people. This method, which provides more data about space together with quantitative data, has the potential to evaluate spaces with different approaches. In this study, by applying the space syntax method, university education buildings were evaluated in the context of cultural sustainability. The main purpose of the study is to investigate the extent to which natural lighting and shading, which are part of spatial configuration and environmental adaptation, which are among the elements that affect the shaping and maintenance of the culture that the space contains, reflect the culture and its suitability for that culture, by examining the correlation between these parameters. In order to analyze an abstract concept such as culture, an in-depth literature review and concept definitions were conducted. After the theoretical background was established, the structures of the Faculty of Law, Faculty of Dentistry and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Süleyman Demirel University were analyzed. As a result of the analyses, it was determined that each faculty evaluated has spatial characteristics that can be associated with their academic culture. These features are emphasised in terms of spatial configuration and environmental adaptation. It is inferred that the emphasised spaces support the sustainability of the academic culture, while the spaces in the background do not.