Assessment of the re-use process of Ziraat Bank headquarters building

Historical buildings which has cultural heritage lose their architectural and historical identities with the changing living standards and user requirements over time and become nonfunctional and unusable. As a result of this, it is commonly encountered that the buildings are adapted to today's life by taking some sub-functions that will support their original and also inauthentic functions. During this process, it is important to re-establish the building with a suitable function that will not harm both its historical and architectural identity. Problems are encountered in preserving the physical and other characteristic features of historical buildings when the potentials of buildings are not properly analyzed. Therefore, the new function which is deemed appropriate for the the historical building is incompatible. It is common that the museum function is considered appropriate for historical buildings that have been revived with a new function together with the adaptive re-construction process. In this case, such structures, which are cultural assets worth preserving, must have undergone certain spatial, technical and infrastructural interventions in order to meet the architectural requirements and standards that belong to the museum function. The architectural ecole of the First National Architecture Period continued to exist for a period in the establishment of Turkish Republic. In the first years of this period, the aim of creating a national consciousness was adopted in the architectural construction environment, and many public buildings representing the period were built depending on this ecole. However, as a result of the changing living standards, large part of these structures have begun to fail to fulfill their original functions. Today, significant increases are observed in the efforts of re-functioning such structures, which have lost their function, however, the suitability of the interventions applied on such structures adapted to the new function and the damage caused have not been sufficiently analyzed. The thesis presented covers the evaluation of the preservation, restoration and re-functioning interventions of Ziraat Bank Headquarters Building, which is an important structure of the 20th Century Early Republican Period architectural heritage, within the framework of the adaptive re-construction process, especially in the context of the 2016 Conservation and Restoration Project which studies new museum usage practices. In this context, the aim of the thesis study is to examine the re-construction process and to determine the most accurate approach options to be applied, and to develop a method that will guide the heritage structures a subject to similar re-functioning in the future. The data obtained within the scope of the study were gathered from the literature reviews on the architectural heritage and re-construction process of the Early Republican Period, interviews with the architects who had one-to-one contact during the restoration process of the historical building, and architectural reports of the preservation and re-construction process of the Ziraat Bank headquarter.