مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - THE EVALUATION OF THE MASONRY RESIDENTIAL BUILDING POTENTIAL IN THE SMALL-SCALE CITIES OF TURKEY

Abstract :

Today the vast majority of urban population in Turkey is living in multi-story apartment blocks constructed of reinforced concrete due to the fact that in the late 19th century concrete and steel took the place of traditional materials such as masonry. In spite of many advantages of masonry buildings, until recently, masonry was not considered to be a convenient material for building construction in seismic zones of Turkey. Thus, in 1950’s for the residential building reinforced concrete started to be used as a construction material in every region of Turkey. This building material first became popular and was widely used but after a short while it was also used in smaller cities. Before the construction of reinforced concrete residential buildings each of these small-scale cities had their own local characteristics but after a rapid urbanization period all of these cities became similar to each other. Therefore, in this study firstly residential building typologies in some small-scale cities (Bolu, Düzce, Çankırı, Çorum, Kastamonu, Kırıkkale) are investigated and for these cities 4-storey masonry residential buildings is proposed instead of multi-story reinforced concrete apartment blocks. Here, it is aimed to enliven the use of masonry again in these regions. To achieve this aim it is necessary to verify the fact that it is possible to construct a four-story residential building with masonry bearing walls instead of reinforced concrete beam and column skeleton system keeping the existing plan scheme in other words without changing its architectural characteristics. For this reason, as a first step, cost comparison of these two different structural systems is made and the advantages of masonry buildings are shown in this study.