The photogrammetric modeling of Kayseri Hizir Ilyas Mansion

Abstract

One of the provisions for being a modern country is to preserve its history and exhibit that history to the service of humanity. The preservation of ‘cultural heritage’ created directly by humans or together with nature should be the joint effort of the whole of humanity. Historical artifacts may be damaged or totally destroyed due to neglect or various natural disasters. To maintain history from the past to the present, it is necessary to determine, document, repair and preserve the current situation of these historical artifacts. Different techniques are used in the documentation of cultural heritages in parallel with technological developments. Digital terrestrial photogrammetry has become a particularly important method used in this field in recent years. This study carried out a photogrammetric survey of Hizir Ilyas Mansion, situated in the town of Erkilet in the Kocasinan district of Kayseri. The mansion is situated on a tumulus, presumably built in the Hittites era in 2000 B.C. This mansion is a prominent artifact of Seljuk civil architecture and is presumed to have been built by a person named Ilyas in the 13th century. Photogrammetric measurements of the Hizir Ilyas Mansion were conducted with the digital terrestrial photogrammetry method. Scaled drawings, three-dimensional (3D) outline drawing and 3D photo models of the mansion were acquired from the measurements. This study shows that digital terrestrial photogrammetry provides great convenience in documentation studies regarding the maintenance of cultural and historical heritage; field surveys take a short time and all other work can be completed in the office. This study shows that documentation studies can be completed quickly and cheaply with digital terrestrial photogrammetry and also demonstrates that scaled archiving of historical and cultural heritage could be conducted digitally and 3D models could be obtained. In addition, 3D animation of the mansion was constructed from “AVI” format video files after the photogrammetric assessment. Key words: Hizir Ilyas mansion, photogrammetry, documentation, Kayseri, cultural heritage.