Proceedings e report - Firenze University Press

WOODEN LOAD BEARING STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS OF KULA TRADITIONAL HOUSES
owned by Armenians living in the city. This building is under renovation process and will be turned
into a hotel as Zabunlar House. These two houses are located side by side, and after the renovation
process of Hikmet Bozkurt House will be completed, the two courtyards of these two buildings will be
used together.
3.1. Construction techniques of Zabunlar house - Göldeliler house
Both of these houses have the same plan scheme, and due to this factor same type of construction
system is used in both cases. This system is the one that is commonly used in all the traditional houses
in Kula settlement. These two houses are located in a courtyard, which is surrounded by high
courtyard walls for obtaining privacy in the house. All the openings of the house the south façade (sofa
façade of the building) is viewed from the courtyard. The main projected room to the street is called
as “bas oda”. This room is the biggest room of the house which is owned by the elders of the family,
and is reached from the differentiated part of sofa. All the rooms located in the first and the second
floors are opened to a semi-open space called as “sofa” Sofa space has a unique part which has
projection to the street, as well as the main room, this differentiated part is the specialized space which
gives access to the main room. North facades of the houses have solid surfaces to prevent the interior
of the houses from cold, and south facades have open surfaces to obtain sun and breeze in the interior
of the houses.
The ground floors are used for service facilities such as barns, depots and because of the privacy item,
the first floors and the courtyard of the house are covered with high and thick stone walls, which are
made of kufeki (a type of stone) as the local stone element of the region. These walls are load-bearing
elements and these walls continue till the second floors on the north facades to prevent the interior of
the house from cold air, and wind. These walls are supported by wooden hatıl elements timber tie
plates regularly placed every 70–100 cm which strengths the building against tensile stress (horizontal
loads) especially during the earthquake loads.
Fig. 3: Construction System of Timber Houses [4, pp. 849]
On the south-west-east façades the first and the second floors have timber framed structure with kufeki
stone as infilling material. This system is used to obtain more openings on this façades, and also the
timber frame system prevents the dead-loads affect the building. The first floor is made of kufeki stone
masonry wall; these walls have 50-70cm thickness. The timber framed system is constructed on these
masonry walls. Firstly a 12/12 cm timber beam for supporting secondary joists and as a base for the
timber studs is placed on the masonry wall. Then approximately 10/12 cm studs made of pine tree are
installed in approx. 1 meter distance with each other on the timber beam. These studs are connected
with a wooden beam on the top level as well. These studs are supported with the secondary diagonal
timber elements with 8/8 cm dimensions. In the cases of a need of openings such as windows or doors,
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