Research Information System
V. INTERNATIONAL HALICH CONGRESS ON MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, İstanbul, Turkey, 15 - 16 June 2023, pp.195-197, (Summary Text)
Historic monuments may lose its functions and become inactive due to various socio-cultural,
economic, physical, spatial reasons, putting their transmission to future generations at risk and
having a negative impact on the urban context in which they stand. Therefore, these structures
need to be reintegrated to the socio-cultural life of the city through reuse. The decision for the
most appropriate new function should be taken through examining the urban physical and
social context, the population profile and the needs of the settlement. One way of doing this is
to consider the context through spatial standards regarding function and the type of the
settlement. In this context, through the churches in the Tirilye Neighbourhood, this study aims
to examine how the new functions of the unused monumental structures in neighborhood
scale can be decided through spatial standards.
One of the building types that remain unused due to the changes in the context are church
buildings, a religious structure which can be found in large numbers in Anatolia. Following
the 1923 Turkish-Greek Population Exchange Agreement, many historic churches lost their
functions. Tirilye Neighbourhood located in the Mudanya district of Bursa province is one of
those settlements that stand out with this character. Today, two of the six churches within the
settled area of Tirilye are in ruins, two of them have been re-functionalized as mosque and
cultural house, and two of them are unused. These two unused churches, Kemerli Church and
Hagios Ionnes Church (Dündar Evi), are located in the central part of the neighborhood. In the
study, firstly, the main spatial organization of the neighborhood is introduced through
readability analysis, and the locational potentials of the churches in this system were detected.
Then, the existence and adequacy of the public functions were evaluated in terms of urban
spatial standards, and deficiencies were determined. Finally, by overlaying these data,
suggestions for the functions were developed. It is expected that the study will contribute to
addressing the needs of the settlement as a determinant in the re-use processes.
Reuse, Tirilye, Church, Spatial standards