Documentation of the dome's acoustic aspects in Mimar Sinan's mosque: The example of Kadirga Sokollu Mehmet Pasa mosque

Besides his numerous innovative contributions to architecture, Mimar Sinan drew significant attention to the acoustics of mosque design by his mosques with optimum reverberation time values and high level of speech audibility and intelligibility. This thesis aims to document the acoustics aspects of domes and semi-domes in Mimar Sinan's mosques, using advanced technologies. Kadırga Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Mosque has been selected due to its optimum reverberation time and resonators which are openly observable in the domes enabling direct measurements. Measurements with conventional methods on these resonators require building a scaffold which consumes considerable time and inhibits mosque's function. Because of these reasons, a terrestrial laser scanner has been used for documentation of the entire dome structure. As a result of this study, it was revealed that 36 of the anomalies measured in the main dome are actually not cavities although they are referred as resonators. In total, 163 cavities spotted in all concave structure in the ceiling. However, these cavities are too small to have an effect on acoustics. Another result of the study is; terrestrial laser scanners are more effective than conventional measurement methods in documentation of cultural heritage.