Examining space transformation in apartment-based housing units in Istanbul using space syntax parameters

Housing units can emerge and also reflect the structure of space organizations as well as social organizations of various scales. This structure is mainly related with when and where they are built, as well as in which social and physical structure they exist. This paper aims to examine and define the relation of the changes in Istanbul apartments' spaces in terms of space syntax parameters through the time period 1930-1980. The change, development and specialization of the living spaces in Istanbul's apartments by time, related with the changing technology that is used inside building spaces and building mechanical systems. The transforming social structure of the society is also the key to examine and analyze the syntactic parameters. Although syntactic parameters are important to analyze the changes related with various turning points in building technology affecting interior and exterior design of buildings, semantic parameters and the behavioral acts of the people living in these houses has to be considered in order to indicate the relations with transformation and space syntax. Changes in the perception of apartments' living spaces by their users with the affect of the technological changes such as the contribution of mechanical heating systems and the TV to the buildings' spaces; building construction regulations are also turning points in the change of spaces. The results of the syntactic analysis made in different types of spaces of various time periods will examine the transformation and development in terms of syntactic parameters of apartments' spaces, but the most important part of the analysis is the affect of building construction regulations, which have changed several times since 1930s in Istanbul, on the transforming morphology of apartment-housing units' spaces. This research aims to provide an understanding of this phenomenon. Analysis will be made through apartment units' plans by syntactic methods of spatial analysis and these analyses should also be evaluated with the semantic values of spaces. The research concentrated on the architecture of apartment buildings built between 1930s and 1980s will try to explore the spatial properties and transformations of the apartments with several examples from different periods in the specified timeline. The results of the case study in apartments' living spaces will be converted to numerical database in order to be analyzed by "University of Michigan" licensed "SyntaxID" software. In this sense, convex space integration analysis with the isovist integration, space partition analysis and visual field analysis are important. Briefly, this paper scrutinizes the relation of transformation in living spaces of Istanbul's apartment based housing units with the change in building construction regulations, and technological inputs of exterior and interior design of apartments by using the syntactic design parameters and analysis.