GELENEKSEL YAPILARDA YAŞLI VE ENGELLİ ERİŞİLEBİLİRLİĞİNİN İRDELENMESİ: MALATYA-BALABAN GELENEKSEL EVLERİ ÖRNEĞİ

In every design made for human; it is expected to have the capacity to meet the quality of life, health, safety, comfort and social welfare of the individual at the highest level. Of all the designs that are the spatial plane of the relationship the human establishes with another individual and space; in addition to being accessible, usable and livable in meeting the individual’s needs, it is expected to have the capacity to easily experience the activities / needs of the individual. The epistemological and ontological value of the concept of ‘accessibility’, in which these expectations are standardized by universal norms, is hidden in its capacity to embrace and include the entire population, including disabled and elderly people, in world cities. The importance of the subject and the concept is based on the need to plan and implement a design that encompasses all urban users and is suitable for each individual, including the increasing population of elderly / disabled people in the world in terms of demographic structure. In addition to the studies for the conservation and sustainability of the buildings in the traditional settlement area that embraces a significant part of the cities, it is necessary to increase the accessibility standards in the context of making social life safer and facilitating the flow of life. Accessibility services expected to be offered at every point of the city should also be designed in traditional residential areas, and if any, improved; otherwise, planning appears as one of today’s needs. While meeting this requirement, accessibility arrangements are also needed in the traditional residential areas of the city in order for the individual to maintain his life by conserving his existing relations and social capital without breaking away from the residential areas and lifestyle. If the arrangements expected to facilitate life in traditional residential areas are implemented as easy-to-use and purposeful designs such as universal design and accessibility, they will make the buildings in sustainable traditional residential areas more preferable in terms of spatial and social comfort by providing opportunities that facilitate the lives of all users. The work is based on traditional residential areas and buildings that were implemented as ‘without architects’ in the past; it aims to reveal how it solves the deficiencies in accessibility with family structure/neighborhood solidarity and to what extent it meets the standards on ‘accessibility’ in studies conducted in this sense today. In the study, in order to reveal that traditional buildings are a system that tries to solve the problems of accessibility in social life with its own design model; the traditional settlement area in Balaban town of Malatya’s Darende district was studied. In this context, literature research and on-site field studies are the main methods of the study. It is thought that the data obtained as a result of the study will emphasize the necessity of increasing the accessibility standards as well as the conservation regulations for traditional buildings and the importance of keeping these residential areas alive in this context.