Sustainability of housing settlements within the context of life-world and Kastamonu example

Architectural environments, as a physical phenomenon and combination of values that bring the memory to this day, reflect footprints of human existence. Individual experiences also based on historical and social factors constitute these environments over long periods of time. Priorities in utilization of space attach diverse meanings to each environment and attribute a different identity to it. Humans reflect footprints of daily life mainly to their houses and immediate spaces of action surrounding it; they desire to sustain their living environment, which reflects their unique identities, as footprint of existence. However, development and associated change are inevitable in the course of life. Sustainability was spontaneous until the 18th and 19th centuries since this course of life was stable all around the world and no large-scale disturbances took place. Nevertheless, the rapid change process, which started with the Industrial Revolution and went on with globalization, affected urban textures; daily living environments echoing traces of the past were destroyed and images of genericity started to emerge in environments that are not created by individuals but for individuals. Modern life style, dominated by crowds but also lack of communication, create adverse mental and emotional effects on humans and may lead to alienation. This process pushes the characteristic stratified structure, created by diversity of lives, into extinction. Concerns for losing connection with the past have led people to seek sustainability. For many years, the studies conducted within the context of this pursuit have focused on the physical preservation of buildings and have not addressed sustainability within the framework of life-space unity. Practices, which allow absolute change or require absolute protection, prevent sustainability of traditional textures by either leading to extinction of daily surroundings of humans or causing settlements/structures turn into museums. Thus, the traditional environments started to become extinct as the lives changed and transformed. Sustaining the past under present conditions requires putting in specific efforts for eliminating the negative impacts that change might have on cities, societies and individuals. This study aims to analyze and discuss how the process of change in urban environments could be managed to assure sustainability of the past under present conditions while avoiding the destructive effects of change. The alternatives that would assure continuity between the past and the future in a way to incorporate changes that are inevitable in modern life and that would help adopting an attitude towards monotony and alienation in daily life as well as their methods, and aspects of the issue to be addressed were analyzed. The subject of this study is the daily life and the residential settlements within the context of its ever-changing dynamics. By conducting a field work focusing on Kastamonu, characteristics of a place in traditional living environments that has survived until today and that could survive from now on were analyzed within the context of life-space unity. The methodology employed in this doctoral dissertation is based on Husserl's "life-world/lebenswelt" concept. Husserl argued that crisis of modern sciences was the result of their efforts to mathematicize our life world. "Life-world" is our natural world in which we live and internalize through our experiences. When the mathematical world turns out to be insufficient, the world of experience steps in. Hence, the background of objective science world is the life world which is actually subjective or relative. Based on the idea that humans are integral parts of the world, this concept underlines the importance of existence of daily life lived by individuals. An individual's philosophy of life has influence on formation of spatial world that is temporal and objective. We perceive the world by considering ourselves both as objects with phyiscal presence and objects being experienced, and try to establish standards accordingly. However, even the things, which we perceive as personal, have roots acutally based on social directives. When experiencing their surroundings through empathy with other people around them, people are restricted with assumptions, accepted principles and beliefs; common subjective experiences help them in shaping the spatial and temporal world. Encompassing all our experiences, the "life-world" is a floating and dynamic pattern that exists and changes with us. Physical surrounding of an individual is shaped by and finds meaning through one's actions based on experiences gained over long periods of time. The urban texture emerges as a combination of physical surroundings gradually shaped by numerous individuals through diverse formations in different times. "Life-worlds", materialized through architectural elements, may be expressed by means of experimental phenomena, as defined in Husserl's philosophy. In this study, an experiencing model, which is based on analysis of residential settlements through different perspectives and focuses on spatial formations with underlying life-worlds, was developed. In this model, settlements were analyzed within their networks consisted of street-garden-house and through two different means: distant experiencing through external, bird's-eye view observation embodying integrated perception of the city; immediate experiencing with close-range texture patterns involving moment by moment perception of a person strolling the streets and identifying with its subject. The observation through bird's-eye view perceives the whole formed on the urban texture by combination of numerous micro-scale traces of life; while strolling allows close-range experience of street-garden-house networks as stages of action with spatial and daily life characteristics. Streets are discussed as the a connection assuring relationship between daily life and public space; gardens as the semi-open areas where people can feel connected to nature and extend their household activities onto and houses as traces of life reflected to the street. This allows experiencing the factors, making up the unique characteristics of the settlement, with life-space unity and achieving detailed perception of texture. In the light of such information encompassing the whole, from urban texture to traces of personal life, it is possible to determine what could be the sustainable key elements that will not disturb the daily life. Each city is shaped differently with its life world and communal living functioning as basis of life world. This doctoral dissertation focuses on Kastamonu as study area. Texture of residential settlements surrounding the Republic Square, which is one of the urban reference areas with traces of modernization era in Kastamonu, was analyzed. This settlement area where traces of the city's characteristic residential texture can still be observed, underlines the visibility of this reference area that we have defined as an anchor element and that is meaningful for urbanite as being one of the two historical centers in the city. In this non-normative settlement shaped by diversity of lives, each street had to be studied separately in order to reveal its unique texture. This doctoral dissertation analyzed process of change and sustainability on four streets located around the Republic Square within the context of network of actions consisted of "street-garden-house" and tried to identify the traces of lives on those streets that shape characteristics of urban texture. The analysis process started by studying the impacts of mind frames of societies lived in the city from past to present on shaping the physical texture, and then focused on change of residential settlements caused by modernization. Available documents and maps were studied, on-site survey and photography works were completed and information regarding daily life not available in written sources was obtained by means of verbal chronicling. The ultimate goal of this research methodology, in terms of assuring sustainability, is the realization of inevitable changes in settlement textures in conjunction with on-going lives and over periods of time. The aim is to sustain integrity of physical texture while revitalizing memories by focusing on "life-worlds" and undisturbing course of life by taking into consideration the present-day needs. The proposed methodology aims to develop a framework for this purpose and identify inquiry criteria of the analysis to be done on other streets. This methodology of research, which enables us to experience settlement texture through life-space unity, could be the basis of a future "design guideline" for supporting identification of details related to physical sustainability such as form, scale, material.