MERSİN/ATLILAT (SADİYE) KIRSAL MİMARİ ENVANTER RAPORU

Abstract

Atlilar is a Circassian village located on the Toros/Bolkar mountain series at about 1400 m altitude and 65 km away from Mersin city centre. Formerly called Sadiye, the settlement has been established by Kabard and Abkhaz groups which had settled in the area with the help of Sultan Abdulhamid 11 at the end of the 19th century. After 1980's the village begun to lose its authentic character that was conserved due to the eth­nic structure and architectural features qu­ite different from the characteristics of other settlement areas in the same climate and al­titude. Mersin, Atlilar (Sadiye) Rural Arc­hitectural Documentation study is based on updated information which was collec­ted for the elaboration of the master's thesis entitled Vernacular Architecture and a Ca­se Study on Atlilar Village submitted in 1996 to the Institute of Science and Techno­logy of Cukurova University. The updating consisted in analyzing the existing physical and social structure, la-king digital photos of the buildings which kept their authentic characteristics and de­termining the coordinates of the settlement by using GPS, Grid-iron schemed first settlement area of the village was on 2 km west of the existing settlement. Due to hard climatic conditions the eighty five households of the old village were moved soon after to the present land and the organic structure of the was formed step by step. The settlement owes its authentic character to the log houses built in juniper trees which were very abundant in the area. So­me of these log houses were reconstructed by reusing the material of the first houses. This way of construction was gradually abandoned when the tree cut was banned by the legislation in 1937 but continued un­til the 1960's. 108 of the 180 buildings were made of juni­per trees. Because of changes in social and economic structure due to migration from rural to urban areas, only 10 of the total 53 juniper houses are still in use. The rest are used for sheep folds or storage purposes or are derelict buildings, Juniper houses and sheep folds that are still in use were plaste­red with mud. This updated study revealed that the most important problem of Atlilar village is the very poor condition of the unused buil­dings and the irreversible process of degradation due to new land uses.