Architectural elements that give religious places their identity: Mardin example

Religious places, which are important structures in terms of culture and society, represent the belief systems to which they belong. The main elements that enable the formation of architectural elements in religious spaces are belief, worship, cultural and ethnic values. Religious spaces are designed by taking into account the needs of the user and aiming to make maximum use of the architectural elements in the space during worship. The architectural elements that give churches and mosques their identity support the functionality and symbolic dimension in space. The main purpose of the research is to analyze the characteristics of church and mosque buildings and to reveal the common concepts related to the architectural elements that give these buildings their religious identity. The criteria of architectural elements in churches and mosques were determined through literature research. Eleven churches and five mosques in the center of Mardin were examined, photographed and the necessary field studies were transferred to the data. The area boundaries were narrowed down to three churches and three mosques. For information about the churches and mosques, the officials were interviewed and audio recordings were taken with their permission and converted into digital data for this study. The data obtained in the study are shown in tables of architectural elements in mosques using the guidance of the Presidency of Religious Affairs (CP and TK 2021), and church architectural elements with the "data obtained from the literature study". With these tables, the features that architectural elements in churches and mosques bring to religious spaces were evaluated. Common concepts were obtained as a result of the identification and evaluation of the spatial architectural elements that give religious identity to the church and mosque spaces selected as a sample. These concepts are shown in the form of "functionality, symbolic and aesthetics" and are presented by making comparisons and associations between common data. The desired result of this research is to determine the criteria of architectural elements in the design of religious spaces as a result of the collected information, analysis and evaluation criteria.